SSW 10.02.19

LEARN WHY 13 NOBLE HIGH SCHOOLS ARE RANKED IN THE TOP 40 PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS IN CHICAGO!

JOIN US NOBLE SCHOOLS & COMMUNITY RESOURCE FAIR SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12TH 1PM - 4PM 625 W. ADAMS ST. CHICAGO, IL Attention 8th grade parents: Meet school representatives from 18 schools and learn how your child can enroll with Noble.

RSVP TODAY: NOBLEFAIR.EVENTBRITE.COM

E E FR Parking

Admission Food Giveaways

FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL: 833-BE-NOBLE VISIT: NOBLESCHOOLS.ORG PAID FOR WITH PUBLIC FUNDS.

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 2 Editor-in-Chief Adam Przybyl Managing Editors Sam Joyce Sam Stecklow Deputy Editor Jasmine Mithani Senior Editors Julia Aizuss, Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen, Christopher Good, Rachel Kim, Emeline Posner, 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, Carly Graf, Ian Hodgson, Maple Joy, 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, Sam Joyce, Elizabeth Winkler Visuals Editor Lizzie Smith Deputy Visuals Editors Siena Fite, Mell Montezuma, Sofie Lie Photo Editor Keeley Parenteau Staff Photographers: milo bosh, Jason Schumer Staff Illustrators: Siena Fite, Natalie Gonzalez, Katherine Hill Interim Layout Editor J. Michael Eugenio Deputy Layout Editors Haley Tweedell, Nick Lyon Webmaster Managing Director

Pat Sier Jason Schumer

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

Over the summer we publish every other week.

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

Cover Photo by Mike Gamboa

IN CHICAGO IN THIS 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

ISSUE

Selective For Whom?

Desegregation efforts in Chicago Public Schools have a history of being funnelled through selective enrollment schools, but the system has expected—and abundant— shortcomings. Ten years ago, a federal judge lifted an order that compelled Chicago Public Schools to integrate its test-in schools by race, suggesting instead that it use socioeconomic status as a proxy for race to continue its “commitment to diversity.” WBEZ reports that this effort failed: the new enrollment guidelines doubled the number of CPS test-in schools that are almost entirely segregated, from three to six. Additionally, the number of white students at the city’s top test-in schools has increased, while the proportion of Black students has dropped citywide. The original mission of test-in schools was to create racial integration in parts of the city where segregation had most stubbornly persisted, but socioeconomic metrics have failed to ensure racial diversity. The vast majority of white students who qualify for selective enrollment schools attend Chicago’s top five performers: Payton, Whitney Young, Northside, Jones, and Lane. White students make up thirty-five percent of the total population at these schools overall, but at the remaining six selective enrollment schools—all of which are majority Black or Hispanic— they make up less than one percent. Many white families’ racist perceptions of the South Side make them more hesitant to send their students to predominantly Black or Hispanic schools, even those that are selective enrollment.

a proper head count

Can’t we agree that children shouldn’t be put in jail?

Last year, Cook County became the first county in Illinois to ban the detention of children younger than thirteen. But not long after, Cook County Judge Michael Toomin, the presiding judge of the court’s juvenile justice division, ruled that the county board’s ordinance restricted judges’ discretion in violation of state law. He ordered two twelveyear-old boys held in juvenile detention anyway.

Last week, an Illinois Appellate Court panel heard an appeal in the case. Public defenders pointed out the serious harm that the state does when it incarcerates elementary- and middle-school-age children. Detention of young people has been shown to have negative impacts on their mental and physical health, future financial prospects, and their future involvement with the criminal legal system. “To put a youth, especially under the age of thirteen, into the juvenile detention center, to take them away from their families, to lock them up even for one day can have such an adverse effect on the minor,” WBEZ quoted the chief of the Cook County public defender’s juvenile justice division, Brandy Brixy, saying after the hearing.

Prosecutors, though, supported Toomin’s initial ruling, arguing that Cook County’s ban on jailing children wasn’t allowed by state law and saying judges had been given no alternatives for handling children who are “out of control.” One judge on the appellate panel seemed to follow this logic, asking how the county could be “protecting” children by not jailing them if a court had found detention was needed.

WBEZ’s coverage emphasized Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s implicit oversight of prosecutors’ arguments, which run counter to the spirit of reforms she has instituted such as raising the threshold for prosecution of retail theft; a spokesperson for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office told WBEZ the office is “not advocating” for jailing children under thirteen. But the prosecutors’ arguments show how hard it is to turn away from incarceration as a default solution, even in an office that has reduced the number of people sentenced to prison or jail by almost twenty percent in the past year (while violent crime also dropped)—and we can expect better.

The arguments of some of the judges are similarly disappointing. We don’t pretend to know all the legal intricacies. Still, technically, this case is about what power judges do and don’t have in Illinois. The best interpretation may be that Cook County passed a law it didn’t have the power to pass. But in what kind of system is it a priority for judges to be able to lock up 10-year-olds—knowing that it will harm both them and society?

a tale of two parades

"If we are not at the table, then we are on the menu." ayana cochran, morgan lee, alexis kwan, irene romulo and sarah conway / city bureau................................................4 reclaiming judgment day

Just as a neighborhood is chaotic and serene almost simultaneously, so is the art space. efrain dorado...................................9 gang databases persist in illinois, despite efforts to eliminate them

Legislation stalled in Springfield, but activists aren’t giving up the fight gabe levine-drizin.........................10 Each ethnic community erected their own church and organized their own parade. jacqueline serrato, adam jason cohen, and mike gamboa...............13 fifty years of fred hampton's rainbow coalition

The trajectory of fearless grassroots organizing that was set in motion by he 1969 Rainbow Coalition still resonates today. jacqueline serrato.........................17

OUR WEBSITE S ON SOUTHSIDEWEEKLY.COM SSW Radio soundcloud.com/south-side-weekly-radio Email Edition southsideweekly.com/email Support the Weekly southsideweekly.com/donate Join the Weekly southsideweekly.com/contribute

POLITICS

A Proper Head Count The people convincing immigrants to take the 2020 Census

BY AYANA COCHRAN, MORGAN LEE, ALEXIS KWAN, IRENE ROMULO AND SARAH CONWAY / CITY BUREAU

T

he framers of the Constitution had a mandate for Congress: count the number of people residing in the country every ten years. Though the decennial census has been in place since the founding of the country, Illinois officials and community organizations are especially pushing census participation in 2020 as the state has billions of federal funding dollars— and perhaps even a seat in Congress—at stake.

Though every single person residing in the United States, regardless of citizenship or residency status, is supposed to be counted, it’s not uncommon for a significant number of people to be missed. According to the Census Bureau’s research, the groups most at risk of being undercounted are racial and ethnic minorities, persons who do not speak English fluently, lower income persons, homeless persons, undocumented immigrants, young mobile persons, children, persons who are angry at and/or distrust the government, and LGBTQ persons. A census undercount can have effects that reach far beyond the federal government or 2020 since many other institutions rely on census data to make their own estimates or structure their data collection.

This year Illinois lawmakers set aside $29 million in census outreach funds, which will mostly go to on-the-ground groups with close connections to hard-toreach populations. Considering the anti4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 2, 2019

immigrant rhetoric coming from the Trump administration, census officials are especially focused on turnout from the immigrant population.

The high-profile fight to include a question about citizenship (which officially will not be on the census) has many concerned that undocumented immigrants and their families will forgo the form entirely. But the undocumented are just one facet of a diverse immigrant community at risk of going uncounted.

This summer, City Bureau reporting fellows interviewed dozens of residents, including immigrant advocates, to understand the stakes of the 2020 census and the behind-the-scenes challenges of getting people to participate. Below we’ve compiled responses from advocates representing several undercounted populations.

Deborah Stein of Partnership for America’s Children explained why children are by the far most undercounted age group in the United States.

Itedal Shalabi and Nareman Taha of Arab American Family Services talked about the limitations of the census racial categories which force many Middle Eastern and North African people to identify themselves as “white.”

Nayoung Ha of the Hana Center described how the Korean community missed their chance to get Korean-language ballots in Illinois during the last census, and

AYANA COCHRAN / CITY BUREAU

how that affects her organization’s outreach efforts this time around.

Nancy Asirifi-Otchere of the United African Organization discussed the changing African immigrant community and why it’s essential for this relatively small group to be counted.

Their responses have been edited or condensed for clarity.

Who are the populations most at risk of being undercounted in next year’s census, and why?

Deborah Stein: The group that has the biggest fear of being counted is undocumented immigrants who are not known to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and are afraid ICE wiIl learn about them in some way if they participate.

We're also seeing a lot of fear in immigrant households that are documented.

The kids that are missed are young children, ages zero to four. So one big group of kids, almost two million kids, are citizen children living with at least one undocumented parent. But even before

t he

is turning

and e co-

C o me o u t t o P i l sen ’ s f a v o r i t e su st a i n a b l e

co n s ci o u s s h o p a s w e c e l e b r a t e t u r n i n g f i v e ye a r s old !

O c t ob er FOOD

MEZCAL

1 1 th

TAROT

/

5-9

READING

p m NAIL

/

1 1 5 2

ARTISTS

theshudio.co

W

GIFT

/

18th

BAGS

RAFFLE

@theshudio

/

312-898-3061

POLITICS

the immigration environment became so poisonous, back in 2010, we missed over two million young children. Four out of five of them were missed in households that were counted. [Editor’s note: The Weekly found that the number of children living with at least one undocumented parent is closer to five million.]

We know kids of color are more at risk of being missed, and kids in linguistically isolated households. So it's not just that English isn't the first language, it's that English is difficult for the family. Kids being raised by grandparents are at risk of being left out; kids who are not related to the person filling out the form, so it might be mom and kid are living with the boyfriend, but the boyfriend doesn't really think of them as part of his family; or it might be mom and the kids are homeless and they're staying with friends temporarily. But they should count them if there's no other way they're going to get counted.

Nayoung Ha: There’s an attitude when you’re a Korean living in Korea versus a Korean living in the United States. It’s an ownership issue. If you’re a Korean living in Korea, the ownership is very strong, everything happening in the government, that’s my thing. But a lot of Korean Americans who live in the United States, even those who have lived here for thirty or forty years, because of the language issue, they always feel like this is someone else’s country, not my country.

If it’s something that the federal government is doing, people don’t understand what it is for. We need to go to MAX HERMAN / CITY BUREAU

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 2, 2019

“Census data is used to allocate over $800 billion a year in federal funding. If you count everybody, the total amount of federal money actually goes up.” people and say, “If you get this kind of letter and need help, ask us, and we will go over it with you.”

Nancy Asirifi-Otchere: I know that there is the issue of trust, especially during this time when there’s so much anti-immigrant rhetoric and so many of our communities are living in fear and are anxious about the government. So I’ve had people ask me, what is the right way to respond? And I think that through our meetings with community leaders and key stakeholders we will figure out the right way in which we are able to convince people about why it’s still important for them to do it.

What’s at stake for the communities that you serve?

Nancy Asirifi-Otchere: Gaining a good count of the diverse African community would not only highlight our number and make us visible within the society, but it also helps us in getting more resources for our

communities. That makes it really critical for us to make sure that we have an accurate count of the community that is here.

I think that there are many arguments why a unified voice for the Black community is important but when it comes to areas where you really want to find specific data about the immigrant or refugee population, then it’s difficult. It’s difficult to identify from that data set which [people are foreignborn].

When we met with staff from the Census Bureau, a chunk of Africa is just grouped under “other African countries,” and there were some people who were asking, “Why is my country not listed?” That is always that bigger issue about Africa and how people tend to group us all as one.

Deborah Stein: It really matters that we miss kids. It means that their communities get less political representation than they're entitled to. Census data is used to allocate over $800 billion a year in federal funding.

If you count everybody, the total amount of federal money actually goes up. Sometimes your community’s share is based on how many kids are counted in your community.

Decennial census data is what school demographers use to figure out how many classrooms or even chairs in the classroom that they'll need.

of people to get a Korean-language ballot in Illinois. [Editor’s note: After the 2010 census, the government began using American Community Survey data to determine ballot language accessibility.] The other point is that the census determines the number of representatives that Illinois has in Congress.

In this era, we need to keep our state’s voice.

What should people know about the census?

Deborah Stein: First of all, the citizenship question will not be on the census.

Census data is required to be kept confidential and a penalty for releasing it is a quarter of a million dollars or up to five years in jail.

If you fill out the census, the Census Bureau won't send someone to your home to count your family because people would much rather do it themselves than if someone comes to the house.

Millions of immigrants pay their taxes using a number that's not a social security number and that's a safe process that still exists. You're already providing information about your family through the tax system, and that's been fine, so you should feel comfortable with this, too.

What is your group doing to help encourage census participation?

Nareman Taha: [Editor’s note: Last year, the government announced that a Middle Eastern North African category would not be included in the 2020 census.] We were hugely disappointed and view this as a setback in the progress we have made towards being counted in this country. It becomes personal and political when we are not treated as white but forced to identify ourselves as white on forms. So for us, this is an issue of visibility and being counted correctly.

Nayoung Ha: We are organizing the Korean American Complete Count Committee whose job it is to get the word out about the census and to encourage people to participate. We are working with seven to ten other Korean American nonprofit organizations, faith leaders, the Korean American Association of Chicago and several academics following Korean American sociopolitical issues.

Hana Center is organizing education sessions, mostly targeting hard-to-count populations in the Korean American community. That includes seniors whose first language is not English, international students, Korean adoptees, the North Korean refugee population, kids under five and single moms. We started collected census pledge cards and we’ve been canvassing and door-knocking in the area around Hana Center in Chicago [Albany Park and Avondale] and in the Schaumburg area.

Nayoung Ha: Last census, we fell one or two percent short of the mandatory number

Itedal Shalabi: We are asking our community members to mark “some other

POLITICS

Photos: Gema Galiana

MAX HERMAN / CITY BUREAU

race” on the census form and write down Arab, and then whatever country they come from originally, be it Egypt or Iraq. The biggest focal point in our Complete Count Committee is to ensure that we are counted, first and foremost, so we don’t lose federal funds or political representation in Illinois.

However, we hope in the next ten years that researchers will come in and look at the “other” responses and concisely explain the consequences of not having a category for people from the Middle East and North Africa. Our goal now is to show community members why it is critical and important to be counted. It isn’t just immigrants but Americans, in general, don’t get how important it is to be counted in the census, and it has huge implications for funding, services and political representation. The census is about our community’s future.

What else should people know about your group’s work?

Nancy Asirifi-Otchere: The last decade or so there’s been a lot of people from Frenchspeaking countries like Mali, Senegal and others, [who] have settled on the South Side right here. A lot of people from Congo— they had a recent election and it turned out pretty rough—and from the crisis in the English part of Cameroon, we’ve seen a lot of people fleeing and looking for a safe place to come to.

The interesting thing about Africans is that unlike how we have Chinatown, the community has over time dispersed and so we don’t have a specific area where you have large numbers of Africans. Really it is a large, diverse community with people from about fifty countries. Different languages,

different cultures, different food. Trying to bring everyone together really is an issue of trying to see how you find uniformity between all these diverse cultures.

Itedal Shalabi: Now, as an organization, we are very focused on coalition building with other immigrant communities and people of color because we need to support one another if we want to survive. We want to show our community how to build bridges with other communities and focus on issues like schools and hospitals.

Nareman Taha: Our intention was never to become political, but then the Arab community suddenly became very political after 9/11. Today, everything about us is political. It made us realize that we need to be active and not just in our own community, but we need to be active and build coalitions.

Our younger generation, they didn’t live through 9/11, but it was a lesson for us that this country targets groups for exclusion.

From the separation of Native American children to Japanese internment, to our Latino brothers and sisters experiencing detention, this country can isolate and bully you, and that’s why we need to organize and build coalitions. If we are not at the table, then we are on the menu. This piece was produced in partnership with City Bureau, a Chicago-based civic journalism lab.

The authors were Summer 2019 Civic Reporting Fellows at City Bureau who focused on the 2020 census and how it impacts Chicago’s diverse communities.

d. Sabela grimes ELECTROGYNOUS

October 10–12, 2019 | 7:30 p.m.

First time appearing in Chicago

dance.colum.edu

C H I C A G O D E PA R T M E N T O F AV I AT I O N

COMMUNITY CAREER FAIR OCTOBER 22ND

10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

UIC FORUM

725 W. Roosevelt Rd. Chicago, IL 60608

BUILDING A BETTER WORKFORCE Register Online for the Career Fair: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2JJKHPC

OCTOBER 2, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

SON A E S 2020 – 9 1 0 2

FEATURING Logan Center Third Tuesday Jazz, Jazz Institute of Chicago, UChicago Jazz X-tet, Hyde Park Jazz Society, UChicago Presents Jazz at the Logan, The Bridge, AACM, the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, and more!

HOMEGROWN

CHICAGO BLUES TALENT

OCT 2019–JUN 2020

EXHIBITION

CHICAGO JAZZ AND BLUES: A PHOTOGRAPHER’S VIEW SEP 27–DEC 8, 2019

ARTIST CLOSING & AWARD CEREMONY FRI, DEC 6, 6PM

logancenter.uchicago.edu 773.702.ARTS loganUChicago

Logan Center for the Arts 915 E 60th St

VISUAL ARTS

The Last Judgment A new exhibit at UIC recontextualizes a colonialist play into modern La Villita

BY EFRAIN DORADO

SOFIE LIE

A

s you enter the exhibition space at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Gallery 400, you are welcomed by a familiar piece of architecture: the Little Village arch that gracefully presides over 26th Street, albeit a smaller replica. In “The Last Judgment,” currently open at Gallery 400, the arch serves as a centerpiece to the surrounding art, tying it together in the gallery’s celebration of Little Village’s history.

While the title of Adela Goldbard’s exhibit, on view until October 19th, may remind one of Michaelango’s fresco that adorns the walls of the Sistine Chapel, “The Last Judgment” is actually a direct reference to a sixteenth century evangelical play by Franciscan priest Andres de Olmos. With this work, Olmos intended to imbue a fear into indigenous people of the horrible fate that would greet them if they didn’t accept Catholicism. Goldbard takes an intentional piece of oppression and fear-mongering and transforms it into a work of endearment and catharsis. Done in collaboration with Little Village residents, the purpose of the work is to contextualize “The Last Judgment,” and its protagonist Lucia, within contemporary Little Village.

What Goldbard creates is a multisensory experience that demands your attention as you travel between the various works. An auditory experience occupies your sense of sound with the soundtrack of Lucia’s Sunday afternoon walk and the various occurrences she happens upon. By walking between paper-mache replicas of an ICE SUV and a paleta cart, it's easy to find yourself in Lucia’s shoes as the entire gallery evokes historical and cultural moments in the neighborhood’s story.

Yet some of the more striking pieces weren’t created by Goldbard herself. Fifth graders at Hammond Elementary School were asked to take a specifically negative experience from their lives and transform it into a more positive narrative. Among the dioramas are a building on fire, a black and red–painted canvas brandishing the word “No” and a paper-mache firearm, and a body lying beneath a bridge near an ambulance.

While many of Goldbard’s pieces certainly are moving, there is something equally powerful about the raw perspective a child has of their environment.

Deeper within the space is a room equipped with headphones and an audio recorder and decorated with

images of children interacting with their neighborhood, created in collaboration with Telpochcalli Community Education Project. Goldbard invited neighborhood children to engage with their environment in an almost entirely audible way. Aided by pictures of the experiment, kids can be seen and heard interviewing each other, listening to the sounds a flower, a playground full of kids, or a stationary foot might make.

There is something uniquely organic about the perspectives children have of their environment, and that’s one of the exhibit's anchors.

This idea of perspective is something that resonates throughout the space, whether through the eyes of schoolchildren or Lucia. The stories Goldbard wants to give precedence to aren’t ones popularized in easily accessible media. Beyond the cosmetic resonance of the works, the accompanying captions offer further looks into Little Village’s history. Relayed through these words are tales of the arch’s bronze clock, the ban on street vendors by the city’s health department in the 1990s, the ongoing ICE raids throughout the city, and the mass deportation and incarceration of undocumented immigrants in present day.

Including these historical moments within the captions encourages a fleshed out narrative surrounding a community— narratives being a central meditation of Goldbard’s work thus far. Her early studies found her delving into literature, particularly from a pre-Hispanic era. Goldbard has said that her “drive and work are born from the combination of literature, narrative and photography,” something made evident even with “The Last Judgment.” Goldbard has also continuously heralded the collaborative nature of her art. There is something to be said about a person that is not a native to the community coming into and creating a narrative around it. There was a bit of hesitation on my own part while entering the space about how well represented the community will be within the art. Goldbard alleviates these hesitations by expressing the collective efforts that produced the many pieces.

The exhibit could afford to occupy more of the negative space left by the works. But the gallery’s quaint atmosphere and the minimal pieces allow for deeper immersion, once again placing you in the shoes of Lucia.

Just as a neighborhood is chaotic and serene almost simultaneously, so is the art space. It OCTOBER 2, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

POLITICS

could be argued that the same experience can be had just by visiting Little Village for one’s self, but having that thematic connection with Olmos’s play gives the experience a literary edge. Goldbard made the conscious choice of recontextualizing Lucia as an immigrant from Michoacan, not far from Goldbard’s home of Mexico City.

With his play, Olmos intended to prosecute and punish any who opposed the word of God, and made Lucia an example. At the end of the play, her earrings explode into fireworks as a representation of some divine punishment. Pyrotechnics aren’t foreign to Goldbard, as nearly all of her pieces have met a fiery fate. The papier-mâché works of “The Last Judgement” will meet a similar end at a culmination event in November.

Goldbard takes an intentional piece of oppression and fear-mongering and transforms it into a work of endearment and catharsis.

Yet, instead of being a representation of the wrath of God, it is instead meant to symbolize the catharsis of a people who have seen the worst of disenfranchisement and systemic oppression.

Little Village is largely composed of Mexican immigrants, which is why it was singled out during nationwide ICE raids

earlier this summer. This event isn’t forgotten in Goldbard’s exhibit and actually takes precedence over much of the art’s themes; migrants came to this country expecting better opportunity, but for many it has been an uphill battle. One of the shining qualities of communities like Little Village in this country is how it is able to retain that rich

culture despite existing in a foregin place.

It's clear that with this exhibit Goldbard intended to display how, despite the many hardships, beauty continues to persevere within Mexican culture and its people. “The Last Judgment.” Gallery 400, 400 S. Peoria St. Through October 19, with a pyrotechnic closing ceremony held as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial at La Villita Park, 2800 S. Sacramento Ave., on Saturday, November 2, at 6:30pm. (312) 996-6114. gallery400.uic.edu Efrain Dorado is a contributor to the Weekly and last wrote about the Virgil Abloh MCA exhibit.

Gang Databases Persist in Illinois, Despite Efforts to Eliminate Them What happened to the gang database legislation that died earlier this year?

A

s the Illinois General Assembly prepares to reconvene later this month for its veto session, community activists are gearing up to continue pushing to reform how law enforcement tracks alleged gang members in several controversial databases. The activists, who have fought since 2017 to dismantle the Chicago Police Department’s infamous— and often inaccurate—gang databases, say any bill that comes out of Springfield should include input from affected communities in Chicago.

During last winter’s legislative session, bills that would have placed some oversight on police gang databases were proposed in both the House and Senate, but were not passed. Activists, some of whom opposed the bill, say they are already scheduling 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 2, 2019

GABY FEBLAND

BY GABE LEVINE-DRIZIN

meetings ahead of the upcoming session to ensure there is more community input and communication between Chicago and Springfield about how gang databases should operate—or whether they should exist at all.

The CPD’s database (which encompasses a melange of data repositories, computer programs and data visualization tools) has drawn criticism for its egregious errors. Outside agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) have accessed the CPD databases—which are overwhelmingly composed of persons of color—more than 1 million times. More than half of the entries in the CPD databases are based on arrests from just thirteen of the city’s seventy-seven community areas, most

POLITICS

on the city’s south and west sides. In April, a report by the city Inspector General made clear that the databases “undermine public confidence in the [CPD’s] legitimacy.”

“When you see that ninety-five percent of the people [in the CPD database] are people of color, there is no doubt that this is a tool used by law enforcement agencies to criminalize communities of color,” said Rosie Carrasco, an organizer with Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), a grassroots group led by undocumented persons. Carrasco found out about the existence of the databases when ICE agents detained a member of her community based on information held by the CPD. Cinthya Rodriguez, director of organizing at the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos (CTU), said the history of the gang database is a history of systemic racism. “But it’s also the history of struggles and fights that have been won by our communities [and] that have not been received well,” she said.

Legislative Stalling in Springfield

S

tate Senator Patricia Van Pelt, whose district includes parts of Homan Square, Lawndale, Garfield Park, and West Town, introduced a bill to reform gang databases in May 2018. State Representative Justin Slaughter, whose district includes Washington Heights, Morgan Park, and some south suburbs—and who chairs the Criminal Judiciary Committee in the

Lightfoot, who has been opposed to the “There is no doubt that this is a tool Lori database’s outright elimination, pledged to the gang database and stop sharing used by law enforcement agencies to replace information with ICE. However, Carrasco said she hasn’t seen “a real commitment to criminalize communities of color.” work with community members around the House—filed a similar piece of legislation in the House in February 2019.

The legislation sought to ensure that access to gang databases be limited to law enforcement or criminal justice agencies or those with the proper security clearance; forbid the use of the database for the purpose of “employment, education, licensing, or housing”; update security procedures; have clear policies regarding the process by which a name is purged from the database; and make it so that evidence of someone being listed on these databases is not admissible in criminal court.

After its First Reading the day of its introduction, HB2519 was then referred to the Rules Committee, which two weeks later assigned it to the Criminal Committee.

After a March 20th amendment filed by Slaughter passed the bill back to the Rules and then subsequently the Criminal Committee, the legislation, with an amendment included, passed the Committee a week later. After its Second Reading, the crucial Third Reading and subsequent vote occurred on April 9th, eventually passing the bill 78-34. The next day the legislation arrived in the Senate, where it languished in committee and died without making a crucial Senate committee vote deadline.

Neither Van Pelt nor Slaughter responded

GANG ARRESTS BY COMMUNITY AREA JAN 1, 1997 – NOV 7, 2018 PERCENT OF ALL GANG ARRESTS

0 - 1.30 1.31 - 4.13 4.14 - 8.80 COMMUNITY AREA UNKNOWN 7.4

MAPPED BY JANAYA CREVIER MADE WITH © MAPBOX, © OPENSTREETMAP

to requests for comment.

The bills may have languished in part because community activists came out against them. Organizations that advocate for communities targeted by the databases, such as the CTU, Mijente, and OCAD, made clear that they felt that the community lacked a seat at the table. Mijente, OCAD, and the Black Youth Project 100 are fighting to eliminate the CPD’s database altogether as part of the Erase the Database coalition. “Finding out that there was state legislation being considered...and realizing that community organizations were not at the table was very concerning,” said OCAD organizer Ray Wences. Upon hearing about the legislation, OCAD reached out to its allies in Springfield and engaged in conversations with legislators to let them know that they felt the bill was a premature solution to a problem the organizers feel lawmakers don’t fully grasp.

Besides the lack of community input, other aspects of the legislation were troubling to activists. Rodriguez said the vague language of the bill would allow for agencies like ICE to continue to use database information. And Wences said the lack of transparency around how these databases are compiled has made legislation “premature.” Rather, he added, activists and legislators should be pushing for increased transparency that takes into account the due process rights of those on the list.

Aldermen Push for City-level Action

T

he CPD database’s overwhelming evidence of racial bias, inaccuracies, and sharing of data with agencies such as ICE and CHA has led many activists to call for its elimination. Moving forward, activists say they plan to continue pushing for change at the city level. A class-action lawsuit filed by attorneys from the MacArthur Justice Center on behalf of four individuals who say they were wrongly targeted in the database is currently ongoing.

And organizers are also applying pressure to City Council. During her campaign, Mayor

gang database.”

In the face of mayoral intransigence, City Council members and activists are taking it into their own hands: an ordinance was introduced September 18th by 20th Ward Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor and 47th Ward Alderman Matt Martin that would prevent CPD from making additional entries to the database and prohibit the department from using gang designations as the “sole justification” for surveilling an individual. Seventeen other aldermen, mostly other members of the Progressive Reform Caucus, have signed onto the ordinance. However, similar legislation that had forty-three sponsors failed to even be called for a vote in City Council last year.

Other Databases Remain Secretive

O

ther law enforcement agencies in Illinois also have databases that are allegedly plagued by racial bias, unclear criteria, factual inaccuracies, and widespread access to sensitive information.

According to reporting by ProPublica Illinois, the Illinois State Police have compiled a list of over 90,000 people deemed to be gang members, some of whom were identified based only on tattoos or informants. The Illinois Department of Corrections also operates its own secretive database, which is shielded from Freedom of Information Act requests. And before it was dismantled by the Cook County Board earlier this year following public pushback, the Cook County Sheriff ’s Office had a gang database that included more than 25,000 individuals.

Noting that all the information gathered about the CPD’s database had to be “fought for” through public records requests, Wences said she was sure that there are “many other gang databases operating throughout the state” that the public is still unaware of. Pushing for “transparency and accountability” is key to organizing support for their elimination, she said, and that effort is an “opportunity for everyone” to join the fight. Gabe Levine-Drizin is a contributor to the Weekly.

OCTOBER 2, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

NEIGHBORHOOD

A Tale of Two Parades ADAM JASON COHEN

LITTLE VILLAGE MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY PARADE

Mexican independence parades in Little Village and South Chicago go back decades

BY JACQUELINE SERRATO PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADAM JASON COHEN AND MIKE GAMBOA

L

ittle Village celebrated fifty years of hosting its popular Mexican Independence Day Parade this year, believed to be the largest Latinx parade in the Midwest. But the much-anticipated annual event typically overshadows an even older Mexican celebration that unfolds in the city every September: the South Chicago Mexican Independence Day parade, which just observed its eightieth anniversary.

Because so much of Chicago’s Mexican life now revolves around Little Village, residents are often surprised to learn that the first major wave of Mexican immigrants settled in Chicago’s Southeast Side at the turn of the twentieth century.

The South Chicago parade is a result of that first migration.

Roughly half of South Chicago’s population was

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 2, 2019

foreign-born when Mexicans arrived to work in the steel mills alongside Black and European immigrants. Currently there is a steel monument at Steelworkers Park titled “Tribute to the Past” that depicts a mustached steelworker with his family, designed by Mexican American local sculptor Roman Villarreal.

Each ethnic community not only erected their own church in South Chicago, but also organized their own parade. “These helped to create both an active social life and a sense of identity, pride, and loyalty based on residency,” says local historian Rod Sellers in his book Chicago’s Southeast Side. “All helped to create a sense of unity both within and beyond ethnic boundaries.”

NEIGHBORHOOD

Today, about one-fourth of South Chicago’s 28,000 residents are of Mexican descent, Census numbers show.

The parade route initially incorporated Our Lady of Guadalupe church, the oldest Mexican parish in Chicago (though it no longer does). Founded in 1928, the church sits a few blocks east of Commercial Avenue and across the street from a memorial to fallen Mexican Americans soldiers in the Vietnam War. The parade, organized by the Mexican Patriotic Club, runs every year from 87th & Commercial to 100th & Commercial. A parade queen is picked by a local jury, and the parade line-up gives a nod to organized labor, Catholic schools, Latino veterans and fallen police officers, and motorcycle clubs.

Thirteen miles north, in Little Village, a Mexican population of 80,000 people spills out into the streets every Mexican Independence Day weekend, an event that also attracts visitors from the suburbs and nearby states. While many upwardly mobile residents arrived from neighboring Pilsen, most Mexicans settled in Little Village as new immigrants in the 1980s.

Organized by the Little Village Chamber of Commerce, the parade begins on 26th and Albany and ends at 26th and Kostner, and aims to showcase the entrepreneurial spirit of the secondhighest grossing retail district in Chicago.

Their most memorable parade marshals include Mexican music legends Joan Sebastian and Ramón Ayala. However, for its fiftieth anniversary, the Chamber invited fifty local businesses and organizations whose “contributions and lifelong service to our community have made a lasting impact” and should be recognized, said Blanca Soto, executive director of the Chamber.

They included well-known Mexican restaurants Aguascalientes, Los Comales, Nuevo Leon, El Milagro, El Faro, Birrieria PatiñosOcotlan, Atotonilco, Los Gallos, and La Justicia.

The parade passes under a welcoming Mexican-style arch, built in 1990 as a joint effort between former Ald. Jesús “Chuy” García and the Mexican business owners at the Chamber. Its striking bronze clock was added later, a gift from the Mexican government to the city as a display of positive binational relations.

This year, Mexicans from different communities led caravans to downtown Chicago after police prohibited the traditional post-parade “cruising” in Little Village and other predominantly Mexican neighborhoods, they said. Residents showed up downtown in massive numbers and circled Trump Tower in a show of ethnic pride and political resistance.

LITTLE VILLAGE MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY PARADE

ADAM JASON COHEN

Jacqueline Serrato is an independent journalist born and raised in the Little Village neighborhood. Follow her on Twitter @HechaEnChicago.

LITTLE VILLAGE MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY PARADE

ADAM JASON COHEN

OCTOBER 2, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

NEIGHBORHOOD

SOUTH CHICAGO MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY PARADE

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 2, 2019

MIKE GAMBOA

SOUTH CHICAGO MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY PARADE

MIKE GAMBOA

SOUTH CHICAGO MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY PARADE

MIKE GAMBOA

FRESH START Live Your Best Life. Transform Your Health.

One in three American adults has prediabetes and most of them do not know it. If you are at risk, you can make changes now to improve your health and prevent type 2 diabetes.

Enroll now in Mercy Hospital & Medical Center’s free Fresh Start program.

Our specially trained lifestyle coach will support you in: • Becoming more active • Working through negative thoughts

• Losing a moderate amount of weight • Controlling your portions • And more!

Individuals who have been diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 diabetes do not qualify.

You do not have to be a patient of Mercy to join the program.

Do You Know Your Risk?

Please contact Donielle Wells, Diabetes Prevention Program Coordinator, at 312-567-2614 or DiabetesPreventionProgram@mercy-chicago.org to find out if you are at risk and to enroll in Fresh Start.

©2019 Loyola Medicine. All Rights Reserved. • August 2019 • 20190812-02

HISTORY

YOUNG LORDS NEWSPAPER COLLECTION, Y.L.O. VOL. 1 NO. 5. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, DEPAUL UNIVERSITY, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.

The Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and SDS join the Young Lords in a march from “People’s Park” to Humboldt Park. Published in Y.L.O., a publication of the Young Lords’s Ministry of Information.

Fifty Years of Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition

A look back on how multiracial Chicago-style coalition building has influenced organizing to this day

BY JACQUELINE SERRATO

C

hicago-style coalition-building helped to produce the first Black mayor of Chicago and put its first Latinx representatives in office. Some even believe its legacy led to the election of the city’s first Black woman mayor.

But unbeknownst to many, this form of

organizing started in the streets fifty years ago with what was called the “Rainbow Coalition”: a progressive, fundamentally socialist movement that set the foundation for radical ideals and civil disobedience in Chicago.

O

n a February afternoon in 1969, Chairman Fred Hampton and his contingent of Illinois Black Panthers went looking for a Puerto Rican kid by the name of Cha-Cha in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. Hampton had just read in the paper that the Young Lords

street organization had shut themselves in the 18th District police station—along with the police commander and the media—to protest the ongoing police harassment of Latinx residents.

The Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers established themselves on OCTOBER 2, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

HISTORY

YOUNG LORDS NEWSPAPER COLLECTION, Y.L.O. VOL. 1 NO. 1. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, DEPAUL UNIVERSITY, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.

Youth from the Young Lords and other community groups occupied the 18th District police station to protest the harassment of the Young Lords and its leader, José "ChaCha" Jimenez. Published in Y.L.O., a publication of the Young Lords's Ministry of Information.

the West Side of Chicago in 1968 and functioned under a ten-point program of self-empowerment and service. Their Oakland, CA founding members were already involved in multiracial movement building through the left-wing and anti-war Peace and Freedom Party.

The Young Lords formed on the streets of Chicago in 1960 as a gang, but in 1968 they declared themselves a civil rights organization. In trips to the West Coast, they were exposed to the Black Panthers, the Brown Berets, and the American Indian Movement, who were mobilizing together for racial justice there.

Shortly after meeting, the two youths would found the original Rainbow Coalition: 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 2, 2019

a “poor people’s army,” as José “Cha-Cha” Jimenez refers to it, that joined forces with working-class whites from the city’s North Side. As men were landing on the moon for the first time in a global display of American exceptionalism, the Rainbow Coalition was drawing citywide and nationwide attention to police brutality, premeditated gentrification, and institutional racism in Chicago.

“Fred took the Young Lords under his wing. He gave us the skills that we needed to come right out of the gang and start organizing the community,” said Cha-Cha, now seventy-one, leader of the gang-turned-political organization, in an interview. “We were already fighting for our

rights in our neighborhoods, and we needed to form a united front. Our mission was self-determination for our barrios and all oppressed nations.”

In Chicago, the Black and Latinx activists became natural allies. Both communities had been battling Italian, German, Irish, and other white street gangs that were enforcing redlining at the street level. Black and Latinx Chicagoans lived together in the Cabrini-Green projects, attended overcrowded schools, and were denied entrance to certain beaches, restaurants, and public spaces; their parents had practically no access to city jobs or home ownership.

The youth, who rocked black and purple

berets as their respective colors, began to identify the “pigs” at the Chicago Police Department and Mayor Richard J. Daley as their common adversaries.

At the time, Chicago was a deeply segregated city, recovering from the violence of the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the assasination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—who, years earlier, led the Chicago Freedom Movement, a campaign against racist housing practices that cemented segregation. Widespread public discontent—and the possibility that the neighborhoods could erupt again— could be felt.

Those who remember Hampton say he had the leadership skills to arrange gang

HISTORY

truces and bring together unlikely groups.

Billy “Che” Brooks, Deputy Minister of Education for the Illinois Black Panther Party, credits him with reaching out to William “Preacherman” Fesperman and the Young Patriots, a street organization of white youths whose parents and grandparents had migrated from Appalachia seeking jobs, but now resided in slum-like conditions in and around the Uptown neighborhood.

The newly formed Rainbow Coalition embraced the historic momentum of 1969 to organize an unprecedented partnership between blue-collar workers from the countryside and a variety of poor urban dwellers. Hampton understood that creating these alliances was necessary to engage in a “protracted class struggle,'' according to Che, who today mentors youth at Chicago Public Libraries.

“Our thing was that Black people organize in the Black community, Puerto Ricans organize in the Puerto Rican community, ‘mexicanos’ organize in the Mexican community, and poor white people organize in their community”— and then they come together, he explained in an interview.

“Today, we call it coalition politics,” Che said.

But at the time, the Rainbow Coalition’s ideology dismissed electoral politics, according to Che, and did not aspire to mere representation politics or a colorblind society, either. Rather, they sought to empower “all peoples of the world” to determine their own destiny —beginning with their own neighborhoods—“by any means necessary”.

The Panthers were aware of the social uprisings taking place in Haiti and African countries to overthrow colonialera dictators, while the Young Lords were just gaining consciousness of their status as second-class citizens from Puerto Rico—a “modern-day colony” of the United States, they said. This internationalist ideology and model of solidarity distinguished the Black Panther Party from separatist militant Black groups, and the Young Lords from other nationalist Latin American groups.

Hampton would often ask white liberals: “How can you go all the way to Vietnam without first going through the West Side of Chicago?”

Despite the gestures of solidarity, it was challenging for the youth of color to completely trust their hillbilly counterparts in the Young Patriots Organization who, in Southern tradition, wore the Confederate flag as their emblem. Che “was not ready for

“We’re gonna fight with all of us people getting together and having an international proletariat revolution” ­– Fred Hampton all that,” he said, and many Black Panthers and Young Lords were not enthused to break bread with the Young Patriots.

Enter Bobby Lee, a college-educated Texan and cousin of Black Panther Oakland chapter co-founder Bobby Seale, who had demonstrated great ability and patience when communicating with the white community. In the documentary American Revolution II, Lee speaks with a sixteenyear-old white boy in a straw hat who wants to take up arms to defend himself from detectives who slapped him around. Lee deescalates the crowded room in the film, speaking eloquently, and convinces them to go protest the police station instead.

Noting Lee’s restraint, Hampton assigned him to help the Young Patriots launch their Survival Programs in Chicago.

The Survival Programs of the Black Panthers were meant to fill a void left by the municipal government and institutions that were not fulfilling the basic needs of all segments of society, in particular the Black community, they said. In response to the lack of healthcare for poor people in Chicago, the Panthers opened a network of clinics in North Lawndale and other Black neighborhoods with the aid of Quentin Young, MD, and other volunteer medical students. The Lords and the Patriots followed the Panthers’ model in their own communities.

The Rainbow Coalition youth—made up of Panthers, Young Lords, and Young Patriots—also launched free breakfast programs that were supported by donations from community businesses and ran free daycare centers for neighborhood children.

Several operations were upheld by the women of the Black Panthers and women’s focus groups like the Young Lordettes and Mothers and Others (MAO). The federal government institutionalized the School Breakfast Program in 1975.

“We’re gonna fight fire with water.

We’re gonna fight racism not with racism, but with solidarity. We’re not gonna fight capitalism with Black capitalism, but with socialism... We’re gonna fight with all of

us people getting together and having an international proletariat revolution,” Hampton was recorded saying.

The overarching grievances of the Black-brown-and-white alliance revolved around the impact that both urban neglect and urban renewal, as gentrification was then called, were having on the slums and ghettos where they lived. The city wanted to “rehabilitate” some of those areas in their efforts to erect a twenty-first century world-class city, according to Mayor Daley’s proposed fifty-year development plan he called Chicago 21.

Across racial lines, poor and disenfranchised youth were routinely harassed, beaten, and incarcerated by the Chicago Police Department. In May 1969, Mayor Daley and State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan declared a “war on gangs” in Chicago, deploying 1,000 additional police to the streets. Twice, Hampton and Cha-Cha, along with Obed Lopez, a Mexican from the Latin American Defense Organization (LADO), were rounded up by 13th District police and charged with mob action for picketing a Wicker Park welfare office.

Hampton and Cha-Cha were sent to solitary confinement at Cook County Jail multiple times as a direct consequence of their street organizing. “This was an effort to criminalize us, to bankrupt our finances, to cause fear and put us away for life,” ChaCha said.

Che, seventy-one, remembered Hampton was sentenced after taking ice cream pops from the ice cream truck to pass out to neighborhood kids. Cha-Cha was jailed for stealing lumber to repair the Young Lords daycare center in order to meet city inspection, he said. Both served their time for those crimes. At one point Cha-Cha had accumulated eighteen cases and Hampton and Lopez each had nine cases.

As a high school dropout and former gang leader, Cha-Cha was a man of few words. Old press photos tended to depict him balancing a cigarette in his mouth. But his confrontational tactics were in line with

Hampton’s and remain a hallmark of direct action.

In Lincoln Park, which has since become a playground for the rich, the first recorded acts of collective resistance to gentrification took place under Cha-Cha’s command. At the time, several institutions—among them the Children’s Memorial Hospital, and the McCormick Theological Seminary that was later absorbed by the DePaul University campus—were collaborating with the city to expand high-end housing near the lakefront: prime Chicago real estate. The developments were designed to exclude the Puerto Rican working class, the Young Lords found after studying the city blueprints.

The Young Lords became emboldened after one of their members, Manuel Ramos, was killed by an off-duty cop, and another, Pancho Lind, was beaten to death by a white gang. The Lords notoriously occupied the institutions that were taking over their neighborhood and presented landlords with a list of demands for institutional access.

But first, they trashed the Urban Renewal office in Lincoln Park, shutting it down for months and sending a clear message of resistance to the city.

The occupations didn’t just put the Young Lords on the map: a $25,000 payout obtained from the occupation of the university building helped to found the People’s Law Office, a social justice firm that represented the Rainbow Coalition against legal pressure from the police and the city.

In public appearances, the Rainbow Coalition was backed by community residents and Black and brown street gangs—but they also had the support of unions, Independent Precinct Organizations, college students and activists who supported the movement through Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Rising Up Angry, and countless other organizations. Their allies included Concerned Citizens of Lincoln Park, the West Town Concerned Citizens Coalition, the Northside Cooperative Ministry, Neighborhood Commons Organization, and Voice of the People.

“It was really based on common action,” said Mike Klonsky, a former Chicago leader of SDS (who, like Hampton and Cha-Cha, had a reward out for his arrest). “If there was a protest or a demonstration, the word would get out and we would all come to it and support each other. If somebody was arrested, we would all raise bail. If somebody was killed or shot by the police, we would all respond together.”

Klonsky, now seventy-six, appeared OCTOBER 2, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

HISTORY

with Cha-Cha, Hampton, and Yoruba, a Young Lord-in-training from New York, in newspaper photos of a press conference held by the Rainbow Coalition. The former leader of SDS, which by 1969 was splintering due to ideological differences, said they were publicly distancing themselves from the Weathermen, a militant faction of SDS who organized a three-day series of violent protests in October called the Days of Rage during which the Weathermen rampaged through the Gold Coast and blew up a statue to police who died during the 1886 Haymarket Riot.

The Coalition knew that Black and brown activists would face the brunt of police retaliation for the Days of Rage—which Hampton denounced as “adventuristic, masochistic, and Custeristic”—and proposed a march from People’s Park (a vacant lot on Halsted and Armitage they had also occupied) to Humboldt Park as an alternative.

“We believed in self-defense, but not provocation,” Klonsky said.

Still, high-profile activists and associates like Klonsly endured government surveillance under COINTELPRO—an infamous program of the Justice Department which sent undercover agents to disrupt radical movements from the inside—and the Red Squad, a CPD intelligence unit dating back to the Haymarket Riot that kept track of their every move.

“Their specific job and duty was to harass us,” Che said. “We had informants within the infrastructure of our organization who we referred to as provocateurs, who caused dissention and were created to destroy and basically annihilate us.”

The Coalition youth protested the torture of Seale, who was chained and gagged while in court for his participation in the Democratic National Convention protests, and the federal charges placed on the Chicago Seven activists for alleged conspiracy and rioting. Around the same time, the Rev. Bruce Johnson of the People’s Church—a United Methodist Church the Young Lords took over and turned into their headquarters—was brutally stabbed, along with his wife Eugenia, in their parsonage in a case that remains unsolved.

The confrontations between CPD and the Panthers were becoming increasingly intense. They engaged in a shootout over the summer that killed Black Panther Larry Roberson. Then in November, police alleged they were responding to a domestic dispute in the South Side when a shootout broke

out that claimed the lives of Black Panther Spurgeon “Jake” Winters and police officers Frank Rappaport and John Gilhooly.

In December of 1969, the FBI conducted an overnight raid on Hampton’s apartment with intelligence provided by an infiltrator. He had just been named spokesperson of the national Black Panther Party. A barrage of police bullets struck him in his sleep as he lay beside his pregnant fiance, Akua Njeri, who survived. Another occupant, Black Panther security chief Mark Clark, was also killed.

Distraught members of the Coalition unofficially disbanded, and a handful of the leadership went underground after Hampton’s assassination, fearing for their own safety. Thousands of people lined up to witness the open crime scene, while lawyers from the People’s Law Office disputed the later-disproved official police account, which had falsely claimed a heavy firefight on both sides. Having assassinated its most vocal leader, the Feds had effectively crushed the 1960s’ most promising push for united, cohesive social resistance in Chicago.

B

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 2, 2019

lack Panther Party Deputy Minister of Defense Bobby Rush and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Chicago leader of Martin Luther King’s Operation Breadbasket, spoke at Hampton’s funeral.

In time, both demonstrated political aspirations. The notion of voting for politicians from the community began to sound more palatable in the absence of revolutionary spokespeople.

Although he was not considered a “viable” candidate by the establishment, Cha-Cha became the first Latinx candidate to announce a run for office in the city of Chicago, a decision he says he made in 1973 while sitting in Cook County Jail. When he was released, Cha-Cha traded his purple beret for a suit and tie, and with North Side organizers Walter “Slim” Coleman and Jim Chapman launched his campaign for alderman in the 46th Ward.

Cha-Cha ran on a pro-low income housing and anti-displacement platform, and lost, but garnered an unexpected thirty-nine percent of the vote and grew in name recognition. His campaign built a base of newly registered voters—Puerto Ricans could vote, as opposed to Mexican immigrants and many other Latinx Chicagoans at the time—and that carried over to Mayor Harold Washington’s campaign in 1983.

Washington, who ran on a

Neighborhoods First agenda, did not count on the support of most of the Black aldermen in the Council whose wards were beholden to the mayor’s patronage jobs. Up until that point, only one former alderman, Leon Despres, had dared to speak up against Daley. So members of the original Rainbow Coalition network re-emerged to get out the minority and progressive white vote for Washington and other candidates who openly challenged the Daley machine, including Helen Shiller’s 46th Ward aldermanic run.

Rush would later comment that Washington’s election was “directly linked” to the assasination of Fred Hampton and the values he pioneered in Chicago.

Klonsky said he “can trace a straight line between 1969 and [...] the election of Mayor Harold Washington, the first Black mayor.”

As the North Side Hispanic Precinct Coordinator, Cha-Cha put together a rally for Washington in Humboldt Park that, according to the Sun-Times, attracted 100,000 Latino residents. “As some of the audience waved Puerto Rican flags, Washington welcomed them in Spanish with a greeting of ‘unity and strength’,” the paper read.

However, Cha-Cha did not get a job with the Washington administration due to his criminal record and past drug use.

He found refuge from law enforcement in Michigan, where he currently resides, goes to university, and maintains a Young Lords committee remotely.

From Washington’s supporters and the organizing network of the Rainbow Coalition emerged a wave of progressive leaders that sought political power in the late ‘80s and the ‘90s. Some recognizable names include former Cook County Clerk David Orr, former 15th Ward Alderman Marlene Carter, former City Clerk and current chair of the Board of Education Miguel del Valle, former MWRD Commissioner Joseph Gardner, former 25th Ward Alderman Juan Soliz, former 44th Ward Alderman Dick Simpson, former U.S. Representative Luis Gutiérrez, and his replacement in Congress and former mayoral candidate, Jesús “Chuy” García, and aldermanic candidates like Paul Siegel and Rudy Lozano.

In 1984, before President Barack Obama entered the picture as a state senator, Jackson would run for president unsuccessfully, delivering a speech titled “Rainbow Coalition” at the Democratic National Convention. He subsequently

adopted the name for the non-profit he founded, and then merged with his Operation PUSH to form the Rainbow/ PUSH civil rights organization. Jackson did not respond to requests for comment.

But the electoral power built by the Rainbow Coalition faced pushback from traditional voting blocs. Washington faced legislative blockades from the regular Democrats during the racist Council Wars, in which white alderman (and one Latinx) banded together to systematically vote against the mayor’s proposals throughout his first term.

The mayor’s death from a heart attack in 1987 caused divisions among Black voters who were split on a Black successor.

The tragic loss of Washington allowed for the status quo to fall back into place under Mayor Richard M. Daley, who—among other self-serving maneuvers—enabled the corrupt Hispanic Democratic Organization that recruited city workers to manipulate the Latinx vote in his favor.

Since the ‘70s, more than thirty white, Black, and Latinx aldermen have been indicted or accused of serious corruption charges, ranging from bribery to extortion to embezzlement. Most recently, veteran aldermen Ed Burke, Danny Solis, and Carrie Austin have made headlines for being of interest to federal investigators.

A

nd from [Washington], I can draw a straight line to what’s going on today with Black Lives Matter— and even the election of Lori, a gay Black woman,” said Klonsky, who today co-hosts Hitting Left, a political radio show on Bridgeport’s Lumpen Radio. “Her election stands on the shoulders of Harold.”

Mayor Lori Lightfoot succeeded twoterm Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose legacy of police cover-ups led to his decision not to run for a third term, with an anti-corruption platform that sought to eliminate the remnants of the old patronage machine at City Hall. Early in her campaign, Lightfoot promised to reform the culture at the Chicago Police Department and address affordable housing. Her campaign swept all wards—though at thirty-five percent, voter turnout in the 2019 election was significantly short of the eighty-two percent turnout when Washington won in 1983.

The issues that Lightfoot and her opponent—another Black woman, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle— championed were brought to the surface by the organizing work of people at the

HISTORY

grassroots level. Throughout Emanuel’s term in office, activists protested the police killings of Laquan McDonald and Rekia Boyd, the mass closure of public schools and mental health clinics, and the ongoing exodus of families from traditionally Black and brown neighborhoods.

The organizing by youth groups like Black Youth Project 100, and labor groups like the Chicago Teachers Union— along with tenants groups, independent political organizations, and crossneighborhood coalitions like the Grassroots Collaborative—all helped to set the agenda for the mayoral race.

Both activists and reformers have criticized the mayor during her first hundred days in office, arguing that she has not made enough progress on the talking points of her platform. And these groups are keeping the pressure on: they are fighting for a fifteendollar living wage, an elected school board, eliminating cash bail, nixing a $95 million police training academy, and improving sanctuary city protections for immigrants under President Donald Trump.

These are values that have been embraced by a new crop of young, multicultural Democratic Socialists and progressives in City Council. Their agendas claim to prioritize a people-powered way of doing government—“for the many, not the few” (as Hampton would say)— that removes big money from politics and ensures community benefits agreements for residents as their neighborhoods develop.

The freshmen aldermen are not only backing, but spearheading measures like a Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) and lifting the statewide ban on rent control. Aldermen from across the city have advocated for the Homes for All, Bring Chicago Home, and the Development for All ordinances that aim to regulate real estate developers and secure affordable living for working families, the homeless, and people with disabilities.

The ideological shift in City Council can be credited to socialist ideas gaining ground in recent years, but also to years of good old-fashioned door knocking and coalition building across neighborhoods.

The Black Caucus, the Latino Caucus, and the Progressive Caucus are expected to intersect with one another to a degree that we have never seen before.

Politics in Chicago have come a long way since Hampton met with Cha-Cha fifty years ago. The trajectory of fearless grassroots, youth-driven, intersectional

organizing that was set in motion by the 1969 Rainbow Coalition still resonates today. “All Power to the People,” an exhibit celebrating the legacy of the Illinois Black Panther Party, is open for viewing at the Woodson Regional Library’s Harsh Research Collection, 9525 S. Halsted St., through December 31. chipublib.org Documentary The First Rainbow Coalition, chronicling much of the history in this article, will premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival on October 24 and 25 at the AMC River East 21, 322 E. Illinois St. José “Cha-Cha” Jimenez of the Young Lords, Hy Thurman of the Young Patriots, and Henry “Poison” Gaddis of the Black Panthers, with director Ray Santisteban, will attend both screenings. $18. chicagofilmfestival.com This piece first published online on September 27.

Jacqueline Serrato is an independent journalist born and raised in the Little Village neighborhood. Follow her on Twitter @HechaEnChicago.

LOCALLY OWNED AND OPERATED.

OCTOBER 2, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21 The 61st Street Farmers Market is a program of the Experimental Station, with the support of:

Chapin May Foundation

EVENTS

BULLETIN Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Water Dancer University of Illinois at Chicago Dorin Forum, 725 W. Roosevelt Rd. Wednesday, October 2, 7pm–8:15pm. $20–$50. bit.ly/coatesuic

TUFTING GUN arts.uchicago.edu/logan/gallery

Logan Center Gallery • Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts • 915 E 60th St Chicago IL 60637

September 13

Assemble and Duval Timothy in collaboration with Demond Melancon and the Material Institute, New Orleans —

In his first novel, Ta-Nehisi Coates—whose collection of poignant essays Between the World and Me won the 2015 National Book Award—delves into historical fiction.

Coates’s novel, The Water Dancer, follows a young enslaved woman in antebellum Virginia named Hiram Walker. Presented by the Chicago Humanities Festival, the author will join WBEZ reporter Natalie Moore to discuss his proposition that remembering and speaking of history is vital to understanding present predicaments. Ticket purchase includes a book copy. ( Jim Daley)

Southside Critical Mass Meet at the south end of Nichols Park, 55th & Kimbark St. Friday, October 4, ride begins at 6:15. Free. bit.ly/SSCritMass The monthly DIY bike-parade-slashdirect-action-ride takes off from Nichols Park on the first Friday of every month before winding its way throughout the South Side. Rides are laid-back affairs that take over streets for blocks at a time— which typically evokes bemused approval from onlookers, but occasionally the ride encounters confrontational drivers (riders are advised they are responsible for their own safety). Rides normally travel about fifteen miles at a moderate pace. Love yourself, wear a helmet! ( Jim Daley)

Fall Family Kite Day

TAPESTRIES

Rainbow Beach, 3111 E. 77th St. Saturday, October 5, 10am–2pm. Free. bit.ly/SSKites

October 27

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 2, 2019

Chicago Kite (did you know the city has its very own mobile kite shop?) and the Rainbow Beach Park Advisory Council are teaming up to host an end-of-summer kite celebration. All ages are welcome, and kite enthusiasts can share kite-flying tips and pointers with representatives from Chicago Kite. ( Jim Daley)

Bitcoin and Black America Robust Coffee Lounge, 6300 S. Woodlawn Ave. Sunday, October 6, 12pm–2pm. Free. bit.ly/SSBitcoin South Side Blockchain is a group of crypto enthusiasts that welcomes everyone from blockchain newbies to cryptocurrency gurus to its discussions at Robust Coffee Lounge. At its latest meetup, the group hosts author Isaiah “Bitcoin Zay” Jackson, who will discuss his book Bitcoin & Black America. After a short talk by the author, attendees can read and discuss passages from the book and discuss the dynamics of being Black in the cryptospace, connect with community or just listen in. ( Jim Daley)

Citizens’ Climate Lobby South Side Chapter Meeting Chicago Public Library Blackstone Branch, 4904 S. Lake Park Ave., Saturday, October 12, 11:30am–1:30pm. Free. bit.ly/ CCLSouthSide Last week, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the United Nations as students walked out of class in an international climate strike. If you’re looking to keep that momentum going with novice-friendly political activism, this might be the meeting for you. The Citizens’ Climate Lobby is a grassroots organization that trains regular people on how to engage with their elected representatives to affect climate policy. At its October meeting, the group will welcome new attendees before discussing policy initiatives, write letters to members of Congress, and plan upcoming actions. ( Jim Daley)

VISUAL ARTS Chicago Review: The Black Arts Movement Issue Launch Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Friday, October 4, 5pm–8pm. Free.

(312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org In its newest issue, the Chicago Review argues for the “continued celebration of and critical assessment” of the Black Arts Movement, a constellation of work produced during the 60s and 70s. The Review’s celebration will feature readings from Sterling Plumpp, Haki R. Madhubuti, Angela Jackson and Abdul Alkalimat—all

EVENTS

of whose writing is featured in the issue— and a performance by Africa and Maggie Brown. Food and drink is on the house.

(Christopher Good)

In-Between States ACRE, 1345 W. 19th St. Opening reception Friday, October 4, 6pm–9pm. Through October 31. Thursday–Sunday, noon–4pm and by appointment. Free. acreresidency.org The name of ACRE’s newest exhibition might suggest International Art English and “liminal spaces”—but with the work of three artists hailing from Chile, South Korea, and China, “states” is no buzzword.

As the press release notes, Dominga Opazo, Ji Su Kwak, and Renee Yu Jin’s concerns are “not limited by a singular framework or cultural view.” The promise is a group show every bit as as interdisciplinary as it is global. (Christopher Good)

Studio Sundays at Maxwell Street Market Maxwell Street Market, 800 S. Desplaines St. Sunday, October 6 (and select Sundays after that), 10am–2pm. (312) 745-4676. Calendar at maxwellstreetmarket.us In partnership with Yollocalli and the National Museum of Mexican Art, Maxwell Street Market is hosting free arts and crafts programs for creative children.

Join them this Sunday for a zine-making workshop, or stop by in November for Dia de Los Muertos celebrations. (Christopher Good)

Be Here Now! — Chip Thomas Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted St. Opening reception Friday, October 11, 6pm–10pm. Open by appointment through November 1. Free. (312) 852-7717. uri-eichen.com Next Friday, Pilsen’s Uri-Eichen gallery will exhibit a selection of work by Chip Thomas, a Navajo Nation artist whose acclaimed mixed-media portraits confront ecocide, genocide, and state violence at large. As the program notes declare: his work has every intention of “[helping] the arc of the moral universe bend a little faster towards justice.”

(Christopher Good)

Envisioning Justice Sullivan Galleries, SAIC. Open through October 12. Tuesday–Saturday, 11am–6pm.

Free. (312) 422-5580. envisioningjustice.org “What happens when you center the voices of those most directly affected by the criminal legal system to reimagine justice using the arts and humanities?” For two years, the Envisioning Justice initiative has sought to do exactly that. This installation documents this mission with artwork and ephemera from incarcerated artists.

(Christopher Good)

MUSIC 14th Chicago Latino Music Festival Opening Concert Instituto Cervantes, 31 W. Ohio St. Thursday, October 3, 6pm. $20 General Admission, $15 for members. bit.ly/LatinoMusicFestival2019 The Latino Music Festival is back for its fourteenth year, and it’s bigger than ever. The entire festival lasts until Friday, November 21, but this opening concert will feature Daniel del Pino, an internationally renowned Spanish concert pianist. Start your autumn off right with this lively performance perfect for a date night or sweet night out on the town. (Atavia Reed)

Duke Silver: Live in Concert Replay Lincoln Park, 2833 N. Sheffield.

Friday, October 11, 8pm–11pm. Free. bit.ly/DukeSilverLive “Parks and Recreation” introduced Ron Swanson’s jazz-playing alter-ego Duke Silver to the main screen, and now a secret saxophonist with the same name is stopping by Chicago to play a night of smooth jazz. Stop by to catch a glimpse of the artist or simply enjoy a night of Friday night rhythm. (Atavia Reed)

5th Annual Blocktoberfest with Derrick Carter Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Sunday, October 13, 2pm–11pm. Free. bit.ly/Blocktoberfest2019 Dusek’s Board and Beer is celebrating its fifth annual anniversary at Thalia Hall with food, drinks and games for the entire family. This year’s lineup features seven

DJs, including Derrick Carter, a record producer and musician who is known as one of the best underground house music players to originate from the Chi. The event is free and will include activities such as face painting and coloring to keep everyone entertained. (Atavia Reed)

Old Town School of Folk Music Indigenous Peoples’ Day Concert Gary and Laura Maurer Concert Hall, 4544 N. Lincoln Avenue. Wednesday, October 16, 8:30pm–11pm. Free. bit.ly/IDPConcert2019 The Indigenous Peoples’ Day concert is a night-long celebration of the Indigenous culture with a variety of live music ranging from hip hop acts to folk bands. This concert, in particular, is in support of the abolishment of Columbus Day in the city of Chicago. (Atavia Reed)

An Evening of Soul with Patti LaBelle and Friends Wintrust Arena, 200 E. Cermak Rd. Saturday, October 19, 7:30pm, doors open 6:30pm. $45.50 and up. wintrustarena.com Songbird Patti LaBelle has hand picked a select group of her R&B soul legend friends for a not-to-miss live concert, where she will share the stage with: Stephanie Mills, Freddie Jackson and El DeBarge.

(Nicole Bond)

STAGE & SCREEN King Hedley II Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through October 13. Wednesday–Thursday, 10:30am and 7:30pm; Friday, 7:30pm; Saturday– Sunday, 2pm and 7:30pm. Prices vary. (773) 753-4472. courttheatre.org Court Theater’s resident artist Ron OJ Parson directs the ninth play in August Wilson’s American Century Cycle and the eighth in the Court’s commitment to produce the complete Cycle of ten. This dramatic tragedy with comedic moments takes place in 1980’s Pittsburg and enfolds as King Hedley II endeavors to make provisions for his family using the best opportunities he sees available. Things take a turn for the worst, when an old family frenemy reveals secrets causing tempers and bullets to fly. Featuring TayLar as

Ruby, Kelvin Roston, Jr. as King Hedley II, Dexter Zollicoffer as Stool Pigeon, Kierra Bunch as Tonya, Ronald L. Conner as Mister and A.C. Smith as Elmore. (Nicole Bond)

Collaboraction Theatre: Millennium Park Series Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph St., Cloud Gate Plaza. Friday, October 4, 6:30pm; Saturday, October 5, 2:30pm and 6:30pm. bit.ly/2lHO8Yu Artist activist theater company, Collaboraction, works to inspire change as they present original performance pieces from their annual Peacebook Festival, focusing on peace and peacemaking throughout Chicago neighborhoods.

The Millennium Park series will feature lights and video projections of Amanda Williams’s Color(ed) Theory photographs, moderated conversations, DJs and special guests. Performances are free and open to all. Collaboraction swag: t-shirts, caps and posters will be availabe for purchase.

(Nicole Bond)

South Side Projections: From the Archives Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Saturday, October 5, 2:30pm. Free.

Register online. rebuild-foundation.org Presented by the Injustice for All Film Festival are two films examining abuse of power in the criminal justice system. See Frame-Up!, a 1974 film telling the story of a Black Puerto Rican bookstore owner framed on drug possession charges in 1967, and Voices from Within—a 1977 short dramatizing the perils of extended incarceration. A screening of the film Gideon’s Army from the Black Panther Party Film Series will follow. Guests are encouraged to stay. (Nicole Bond)

Campfire Horrors at Northerly Island Northerly Island Park, 1521 S. Linn White Dr. October 4–25. Friday, 7pm. chicagoparkdistrict.com/events Summer is officially over but that’s no reason to stop movies in the park!

Northerly Island Park will be the main venue for screenings of your favorite scary movies on Friday nights during OCTOBER 2, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

EVENTS

the Halloween season. All screenings are outdoors and set to go rain or shine but will be moved inside if it rains. Bring your blankets and chairs to enjoy a cozy fire with free fixings for toasting marshmallows.

Features include Frankenstein, Misery, Shaun of the Dead, and Interview with the Vampire, with a bonus kid-friendly feature (Hocus Pocus) October 4th. (Nicole Bond)

Doc Films Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St., Max Palevsky Cinema. General admission $7.

(773) 702-8574. docfilms.uchicago.edu Check out one of the best-kept secrets for movie screenings on the South Side.

Yes, the theater is housed inside one of the UChicago campus buildings, but don’t let that put you off. Doc Films is an actual movie theater with a full size screen, popcorn, and you the public are welcome.

Upcoming titles include American Graffiti, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, Goodfellas, Super Fly, and Boogie Nights. Visit their website for the complete calendar. See you there! (Nicole Bond)

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St. Select dates and times, October 25–31. $12 general admission, $7 students, $6 film center members. (312) 846-2800. siskelfilmcenter.org If you missed this moving documentary portrait of the incomparable author Toni Morrison, screened recently as part of the twenty-fifth annual Black Harvest Film Festival, here is your chance to see it or even see it again. This close up look at the life and experiences of Morrison told in her own words, with added reflections from her friends, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis, Fran Lebowitz and Oprah Winfrey, is funny, poignant and inspirational. (Nicole Bond)

Fame: A Movie Event Fundraiser Harold Washington Cultural Center, 4701 S. King Dr. Monday, October 14, 2pm. $20 general admission. Advance purchase only—no tickets sold at the door. Use discount code: COMMUNITY to save $10 off tickets through October 4. redclaydance.com/performances Support Red Clay Dance Company & Youth Ensemble in raising travel funds to participate in the 2020 International

Association of Blacks in Dance Conference in Philadelphia. Then stay for a post-show Q & A with industry professionals, and rising stars of dance, television, and film.

(Nicole Bond)

FOOD & LAND Farmers Markets Wednesdays: Washington Park Farm Stand, 555 E. 51st St. Wednesdays, 9am–1pm. Through October 9. chicagobotanic.org Roseland City Market, 200 W. 109th St. Wednesdays, 2:30pm–5:30pm. Through October 30.

Boxville, 320 E. 51st St. Wednesdays, 4pm–7pm. facebook.com/Boxville51 Thursdays: City Market at Daley Plaza, 50 W. Washington St. Thursdays, 7am–2pm.

Through October 24. bit.ly/DaleyPlazaMarket Hyde Park Farmers Market, 5300 S. Harper Ct. Thursdays, 7am–1pm. Through October. downtownhydeparkchicago.com Fridays: Fresh Beats & Eats Farmers Market, 2744 W. 63rd St. Fridays, 2pm–6pm, through October 25. facebook.com/imancentral Saturdays: Printers Row City Market, 700 S. Dearborn St. Saturdays, 7am–1pm. Through October 26.

Eden Place Farmers Market, 4911 S. Shields Ave. Saturdays, 8am–2pm. Through October 12. edenplacefarms.org 61st Street Farmers Market, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Saturdays, 9am–2pm.

Through October 27. experimentalstation.org/ market Farmers Market at The Port Ministries, 5013 S. Hermitage Ave. The second Saturday of each month, noon–4pm. facebook.com/ theportministries Sundays: 95th Street Farmers Market, 1835 W. 95th St. Sundays, 8am–1pm. Through November.

95thstreetba.org/farmers-market Maxwell Street Market, S. Desplaines St. & W. Taylor St. Sundays, 9am–3pm. bit.ly/ MaxwellStMarketChicago

Pilsen Community Market, 1820 S. Blue Island Ave. Sundays, 9am–3pm. Through October. facebook.com/pilsenmarket Wood Street Urban Farm Stand, 1757 W. 51st St. Sundays, 9am–noon. Through November 24.

Multiple Days: UHSC Farm Stand, 1809 W. 51st St. Mondays–Fridays, 9am–1pm, through November 25.

Gary Comer Youth Center Farmers Market, 7200 S. Ingleside Ave. Tuesdays & Fridays, 3pm–6pm. Through October 29. garycomeryouthcenter.org/produce Farm on Ogden Food Stand, 3555 W. Ogden Ave. Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11am– 7pm; Wednesdays, Fridays, & Saturdays, 10am–6pm. chicagobotanic.org

2nd Wednesday Lecture: Immigration and Urban Agriculture Garfield Park Conservatory, 300 N Central Park Ave, Wednesday, October 9, 6pm– 7:30pm. Free. bit.ly/2ndWednesdayLecture Garfield Park Conservatory invites you to join them as they “continue the tough conversations that will enlighten and activate our best selves.” Featuring Vivi Moreno, a native of Maracaibo, Venezuela, the lecture “welcomes you to gain insight into how matters of people, place, and green space matter—in Chicago and beyond.” Vivi Moreno is a queer immigrant organizer who has called Chicago home for almost ten years. She is an active organizer with the Semillas de Justicia Community Garden which is overseen by the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) and she is also a worker-owner of Catatumbo Cooperative Farm. (AV Benford)

A Culinary Journey: How Chinese Workers Built the Railroad Chinese American Museum of Chicago, Raymond B. & Jean T. Lee Center, 238 W. 23rd St, Saturday, October 12, 2pm–4pm. $5. bit.ly/culinaryrailroad The Chinese American Museum of Chicago is excited to present an interactive sensory program highlighting the healthy eating habits of the Chineses workers that helped build the continental railroad.

This culinary journey promises a cooking demonstration by Chef Don B. Lee whose offerings will be paired with various Chinese teas. This festival is a part of Inherit Chicago, which is a month-long festival presenting intercultural art, ideas and performance brought to you by the Chicago Cultural Alliance. (AV Benford)

“Inspire Series” with Regine Rousseau CO-LAB7100, 7100 S. Shore Dr., Wednesday, October 9, 6pm–7:30 pm. Free. colab7100.com Calling all aspiring entrepreneurs, calling all would-be wine connoisseurs: head on over to South Shore’s CO:LAB7100 next Wednesday evening. In the first October installment of their weekly “Inspire Series,” the co-working, business-incubating hub welcomes Regine Rousseau, founder and CEO of Shall We Wine for a chat and a sip. Shall We Wine’s employees hop around the city leading wine tastings and trainings for everyone from head chefs to supermarket shoppers. Come learn from Rousseau how to break into your business’ niche and maybe even ascertain a glimpse of what all those adjectives on the back of your bottle of vino really mean anyway.

(Sarah Fineman)

South East Chicago Commission Symposium Harris School of Public Policy, 1307 E. 60th St. Saturday, October 12th. 8am–3pm. Free with registration. secc-chicago.org Since 1952, the South East Chicago Commission has been focusing its nonprofit energies on planning development projects along the South Side’s lakefront neighborhoods. This year, for the first time ever, they’re hosting a formal symposium to think on past work and discuss movements for the future. Geared towards business owners and centered around a theme of “Fueling our Economic Evolution,” the day-long event features a keynote address

by Valerie Jarrett, who served as SECC Board President before stepping down in 2006 to advise President Obama’s first run.

(Sarah Fineman)

OCTOBER 2, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 25

EVENTS

Openings PILSEN—Señoritas Cantina & Bar Now open in the former space occupied by restaurant and lounge Zebraz 18, the chef at Señoritas Cantina, Bernardino Ocotl, aims for the holy grail of cooking. He wants his cooking to remind you of your abuela's kitchen, decidedly homemade. The tacos at the cantina include options like duck and mahi-mahi and are under $4.00 each. The menu also includes mini sopes, and chicken in mole poblano. Señoritas is also planning Sunday brunch with offerings like chilaquiles, enchiladas with an egg on top and pozole. 1104 W. 18th St. (AV Benford) WOODLAWN—Reggies On The Beach Opening this past Labor Day, Reggies On The Beach, which is a spin-off of its South Loop rock club sibling, will have a very short season this year. It has to close by November 1st. But until then they will be open on good weather days, during Bears games and hopefully for Halloween. This location does not currently have the live rock music of its sibling, but it does still have beer and the sea-like views of Lake Michigan that appear to more than make up for it. 6301 S. Lake Shore Drive. (AV Benford)

NATURE Stewardship Opportunities Canal Origins Park, 2701 S. Ashland Ave. Saturday, October 5, 10am–12pm. bit.ly/ COStewardship Greenwood Park Apartments, 1015 E. 47th St. Saturday, October 5, 9am–1pm. openlands.org/trees/forestry-events West Pullman Park, 401 W. 123rd St. Sunday, October 6, 10am–1pm. openlands.org/trees/forestry-events 12th St. Beach, 1200 S. Linn White Dr. Wednesday, October 9, 11:30am–1:30pm. bit.ly/12thStewardship Ping Tom Park, 1700 S. Wentworth Ave. Saturday, October 12, 10am–12pm. bit.ly/PTStewardship Indian Ridge Marsh, 11600 S. Torrence Ave. Saturday, October 12, 9am–12pm. bit.ly/IRMStewardship Big Marsh Park, 11599 S. Stony Island Ave. Saturday, October 12, 9am–1pm. bit.ly/ BMStewardship 26 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 2, 2019

Pasteur Elementary School, 5825 S. Kostner Ave. Saturday, October 12, 9am– 1pm. openlands.org/trees/forestry-events Want to get your hands dirty? There’s plenty of opportunities to get involved in environmental stewardship. Depending on the park and the season, volunteers may be cleaning up the site, collecting native plant seeds, removing invasive species, or planting native plants. Make sure to dress for working outdoors: long pants, closed-toe shoes, and a hat if it’s sunny. (Sam Joyce)

Wooded Island Bird Walk Museum of Science and Industry East Parking Lot. Saturdays, 8am–11am. bit.ly/ JPBirdWalk Contact Pat Durkin for more: pat.durkin@comcast.net. Free.

Join the Chicago Audubon Society for a bird walk through Jackson Park. Learn how to identify birds, while observing birds as they build their nests and raise their chicks. You do not need to be a member of Chicago Audubon to participate. Walks are held weekly through December. (Sam Joyce)

Artecito Roedores OPEN Center for the Arts, 2214 S. Sacramento Ave. October 6, 11am–2pm. Free. bit.ly/OPENRoedores This afternoon of art gives kids an opportunity to learn about nature by painting and creating. Co-hosted by the Lincoln Park Zoo, this event will teach children about rodents while also offering a chance to make art. (Sam Joyce)

National Walk to a Park Day October 10th, nationwide. Follow along with the Trust’s Instagram, @trustforpublicland, and the hashtag #walktoaparkday.

The Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit focused on creating parks and conserving open space, has named October 10th National Walk to a Park Day. The day is intended to celebrate public parks, while also highlighting the issue of park equity. The majority of Chicagoans have a park within ten minutes of their homes, but 56,899 Chicago residents—along with 100 million Americans—don’t have a park within easy walking distance. As you walk to your neighborhood park, think about the inequities you notice along the way, and

the role that local government can play in promoting exercise and community space in your neighborhood. (Sam Joyce)

El Paseo Harvest Festival El Paseo Garden, 944 W. 21st St. Saturday, October 12, 10am–2pm. elpaseogarden.org/harvest-festival-2019/ Join El Paseo Garden for their tenth anniversary celebration! This event will feature live music, dance, and pumpkin painting, and is held in conjunction with El Paseo’s pop-up market series. Stop by the market to pick up some treats, then visit the garden to celebrate ten years of El Paseo.

(Sam Joyce)

Healthy Soil Healthy Body Eden Place Farms, 4911 S. Shields Ave. October 12, 9am–4pm. Free, RSVP requested: bit.ly/HealthySoil2019 This day of learning offers a chance to explore the world of soil, with guidance from Eden Place’s experienced urban farmers. This event will include demonstrations of a variety of farm equipment, lessons about soil biology and health, and an opportunity to meet with a USDA representative and learn about funding opportunities for your urban farm.

(Sam Joyce)

Apple-palooza at Chicago Women’s Park Chicago Women’s Park and Gardens, 1801 S Indiana Ave. Apple-palooza: Saturday, October 5th. 11am–2pm. $5. Advisory Council Meeting: Tuesday, October 8th.

6:45pm. Free. chicagowomenspark.com There’s no fruit more synonymous with autumn than the good old all-American apple. South Siders can trek out into the suburbs for some orchard-picking, or we can stay local and enjoy the Chicago Women’s Park’s annual Apple-palooza.

Look forward to hay rides, storytelling, and an apple-themed food court. Then return three evenings later for the monthly meeting of the park’s advisory council and tell them how much fun you had. (Sarah Fineman)

THIS WEEKEND