The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, artists, photographers, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.
Volume 12, Issue 10
Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato
Managing Editor Adam Przybyl
Investigations Editor Jim Daley
Senior Editors Martha Bayne
Christopher Good
Olivia Stovicek
Sam Stecklow
Alma Campos
Jocelyn Martinez-Rosales
Community Builder Chima Ikoro
Public Meetings Editor Scott Pemberton
Interim Lead
Visuals Editor Shane Tolentino
Director of Fact Checking: Ellie Gilbert-Bair
Fact Checkers: Bridget Craig
Jim Daley
Alani Oyola
Kateleen Quiles
Rubi Valentin
Layout Editor Tony Zralka
Executive Director Malik Jackson
Office Manager Mary Leonard
Advertising Manager Susan Malone
The Weekly publishes online weekly and in print every other Thursday. We seek contributions from all over the city.
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IN CHICAGO
Illinois Latinos Throw a Wrench in Kristi Noem’s Propaganda Every spring, hundreds of Latinx residents bus it to Springfield to advocate for their communities and to talk to their state representatives and senators on a variety of issues: immigration reform, public education, healthcare access, and more. Dozens of established non-profit organizations from Chicago take the lead, like the Latino Policy Forum and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), but groups from a variety of suburbs and towns are represented.
This year, on the fifteenth anniversary of Latino Unity Day, attendees got a chance to demonstrate their unity in numbers upon hearing that Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem was making a surprise visit to continue her crusade against immigrant families. She had summoned the media for a press conference in front of Governor J.B. Pritzker’s mansion and the word spread like fire.
You may have heard her multimillion-dollar ad campaign that goes: President Trump has a clear message—if you are here illegally, we will find you and deport you. You will never return. But if you leave now, you may have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream. If you are a criminal alien considering entering America illegally: Don’t even think about it…and so on.
Unbeknownst to her, there was a large Latinx presence in Springfield for the “Quinceañera” that week, and they quickly mobilized to rally on Pritzker’s sidewalk right before her arrival. The governor placed a “Due Process for All!” banner on his wrought iron fence and Secretary of State Alexis Giannolias took the podium that Noem was supposed to speak from. “So on a day when Kristi Noem should be doing her job and helping us with REAL ID, she’s traveling the country doing political stops, publicity events, a vanity tour,” he said to cheers and boos from the crowd.
Noem’s team had to pivot and relocate the press conference. Few news reports that day mentioned the protest, however, which was later followed by a solidarity march to the capitol where organizers spoke up and mariachi music contributed to an empowering atmosphere.
“Secretary Noem must have not realized she was visiting during Latino Unity Day,” Pritzker said in a statement that afternoon, “where we come together to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of our community. Today, Secretary Noem was met by a force stronger than her: the people of Illinois.”
Champaign-based State Representative Carol Ammons also stated, “Trump and his officials are shredding the Constitution, depriving human beings of their due process rights, tearing away parents from their children, and making our communities less safe. In Illinois we will not put people to war against each other. Working class people of all backgrounds are united. The administration and their lackeys will not force our state to comply with their illegal and morally abhorrent actions.”
IN THIS ISSUE
mayor johnson at the midterm mark
The Mayor sat down with the Weekly to discuss his first two years in office, and more.
jim daley .................................................. 4
el alcalde johnson a medio mandato
El alcalde se sentó con el Weekly para hablar de sus primeros dos años en el cargo y más. por jim daley traducido por jacqueline serrato ................................. 5
‘there are no places for us to just be free’
Black teenagers spoke to The TRiiBE about teen trends, how they’re treated in the Loop, and what solutions could fill the gap in youth-oriented spaces. tonia hill, the triibe 7 do curfews make us safer?
Academic research on curfew laws in the U.S. has found mixed results.
jim daley 10
what happened to chicago’s third spaces?
Chicago remembers when teens could hang at the mall, juke at the roller rink, or dance battle at nightclubs.
corli jay, the triibe .............................. 11 op-ed: black and brown youth need commitment, not criminalization
Can we build a system that makes room for our freedom?
kofi ademola and reynia jackson, goodkids madcity 13
what’s it like to raise teens in 2025?
Three parents share their thoughts on teen takeovers, the curfew, and more.
chima ikoro 14
what it looks like to fight back
In the last remaining building of the Jane Addams Homes, a small museum fights to preserve not just artifacts but dignity and justice.
nabeela washington ............................. 18
south side sports roundup
The latest results and other news from the Chicago sports world.
malachi hayes 21
public meetings report
A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level.
scott pemberton and documenters 22 the exchange
Cover illustration by Riley Hannon
Last week, Noem had a hearing in D.C. with the Homeland Security Committee, where she was questioned about upholding the Constitution. “See, I find that laughable,” said Congresswoman Delia Ramírez from the Northwest Side. “You don’t behave like someone who takes that oath seriously. Let me tell you why…” and listed the ways Noem has disregarded the rule of law in the 100 days she’s been in office.
“I, again, to your face, demand your resignation and place that request on the record,” Ramírez said. After the hearing, she handed Noem the letter demanding that she resign.
The Weekly’s poetry corner offers our thoughts in exchange for yours.
The Mayor sat down with the Weekly to discuss his first two years in office and more.
BY JIM DALEY
Last week, Mayor Brandon Johnson did a media blitz to mark the second anniversary of his inauguration. Johnson, a former Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) organizer and Cook County Commissioner, was carried to City Hall by the support of labor organizers, activists, Black voters on the South and West Sides, and progressive white voters on the North Side in an election where about 40 percent of registered voters cast a ballot.
An ebullient inauguration and ambitious plan to reshape how the city approaches its most pressing issues— violence, education, and housing, to name a few—quickly ran into challenges. When he took office, thousands of asylum-seeking people who’d been bussed to Chicago from Texas and other states were sleeping on police station floors and in tents as they waited for a spot in the city’s overburdened shelter system. Violent crime was still above pre-pandemic levels.
Amid these challenges, Johnson stumbled. While his administration succeeded in standing up an ad-hoc shelter system for asylum seekers, the staggering cost of the effort and choices, such as placing one in a shuttered Woodlawn school, enraged Black residents who felt their long-overlooked needs were once again being shunted aside. Johnson’s first chief of staff, City Hall veteran Rich Guidice, quit in under a year, concerning some in city government. The Mayor’s Office has seen more turnover of senior staff since then.
The mayor has at times struggled to push his legislative agenda through an increasingly restive City Council. A referendum he championed that would have raised taxes on the priciest real-estate sales, while cutting taxes on less expensive ones was rejected by voters. The City Council unanimously rejected his proposed $300 million property tax increase during last year’s budget debate. And Johnson’s cancellation of ShotSpotter’s contract fulfilled a campaign promise but was met
with such fierce pushback that he is now considering bringing gunshot-detection technology back.
Johnson has also scored some significant wins. An ordinance sundowning sub-minimum wages for tipped workers passed with his support. Earlier this month, the council passed the mayor’s “green social housing” plan that would create a cityowned nonprofit to drive the growth of affordable housing. And he has negotiated a generous contract with his former union while consolidating control of the public school system, forcing out CEO Pedro Martinez and appointing loyalists and teachers union activists to the school board. And so far this year, violent crime is down significantly compared to previous years, with April seeing the fewest homicides in six decades.
In his next two years, Johnson must build on his wins, coax alderpersons to support his initiatives and convince voters he’s turned it around. Barring that, he has time to cement his gains and hope they coalesce into a legacy. At the two-year mark, he sat down with the Weekly to discuss his achievements, challenges, theory of change—and Da Pope.
What follows has been edited and condensed for length. Read the full interview at bit.ly/ JohnsonMidterm
Jim Daley: What achievements in your first two years are you proudest of?
Mayor Johnson: My top priority is to keep people safe in the city of Chicago, and historically, we’ve been challenged with disinvestment that has, I believe, has played a part in violence. And violent crime has gone down significantly this year; we're already seeing a 22 percent reduction, and that has a lot to do with the full-forceof-government approach, right? And as we build more affordable homes, I’m very proud of that—with our $1.25 billion investment for housing and economic development, it's the largest in the history of Chicago. That is transformative, right? Chicago is also responding to our investments in mental and behavioral health. As you may be aware, 40 percent, I believe, of 911 calls historically have been for mental-health crises. So, now that law enforcement is no longer responsible to show up to those interactions, it has freed law enforcement up to respond to the more violent crime. We also reopened three
mental health clinics.
I’m very proud of the fact that, you know, we’re going to hire up to 29,000 young people for summer jobs. That’s an incredible jump of 45 percent since taking office. So all of that has played a part in driving violence down in the city of Chicago. A lot of work to be done. But I am encouraged by the results that we've experienced so far.
With regard to attacking the economic root causes of violence, how do you approach a problem that’s that big?
You don’t approach it in isolation. The public sector has a responsibility. That’s what I have control over. But I also have the responsibility to bring businesses to the table. And many of them have shown up to help us professionalize and grow the industry of community violence intervention workers. And it’s that type of public-private approach that really allows us to tackle these big problems. So, when I think about youth employment, it's not just the government—and we’re going to do everything on our part to ensure that government does its part—but it’s not just the government offering up youth employment.
There’s a program that I’m really proud of, though, is the pilot program that we started last year where we hired seventy-five graduating seniors from Chicago Public Schools to participate in a pilot program serving in our Streets and Sanitation department.
But we also have to build more affordable homes so that those same young people can afford to start a family in the city of Chicago, while also challenging our corporate leaders to invest in youth employment—but also to think about how we come together collectively to alleviate the burden of taxation on working people. So: $11 billion of new investments last year. PSI Quantum is just the big one.
Mayor Brandon Johnson sat down with the Weekly’s Jim Daley on the eve of the second anniversary of his inauguration.
Photo by Jim Daley
37,000 construction jobs. We’re at $8 billion already this year. Streamlining the process so that it’s easier and more productive to do business with the city of Chicago. All of that plays a part in driving violence down in the city, and it’s working so far. But we can’t let up yet.
Speaking of PSI Quantum, the city held a community meeting where there was significant pushback from the community. How are you bringing those voices into the room?
By having community meetings. I mean, we’re listening to people. I understand they’re, you know, some of the concerns that they have and even the trepidation around this. We’re going to do it together. Look, we haven’t had investment on the Southeast Side of Chicago in over thirty years, the first administration to bring that type of investment there, we don’t want the investment to be received with animus, right? You know, we want to ensure that these investments are really about the full development of that entire region that really is going to benefit the entire city of Chicago.
Your administration negotiated a very fair contract with the CTU, and the schools have a $500 million projected deficit. How are you going to pay for that contract?
We’ll look at multiple different ways in which we can address it, but it’s really going to require all of us working together. And was the motivation behind the working group that I established through an executive order to help think through how we solve our challenges at the city level, all of it will work in tandem. Look, financial negligence and malfeasance has finally showed up; there’s no more kicking the can down the road. We have to address this in the short and long term. And I’m going to be working with the new leadership at Chicago Public Schools, along with the Board of Education, to come up with ideas and solutions that we can all get behind that don’t require us to withhold or to reduce the investments that we’ve already made.
What do you say to people who see your push to install your chief of staff as CPS CEO as you consolidating control of
the schools?
I have not made a decision on the leadership for the Chicago Public Schools just yet. I will, and that person will reflect my values. This is not about one entity having control over the other. This is about all of us working together, and that’s what my commitment is.
What regrets do you have from your first two years, and what lessons have you learned?
I do have some lessons that I’ve learned. One of those real tough lessons that I learned is that just because you're doing good stuff, it doesn’t mean that everybody knows that, or even if they know they may not know what, but they may not know why.
And so one of the things that I do regret is that at the time in which I was standing up government to bring about the transformation that we are experiencing now, bringing all of the different leaders together in the city of Chicago that would help me run this government, the coalition that elected me, I had a responsibility to make sure that that coalition was stood up as well.
For your next two years, what do you most hope to achieve?
I believe that the city of Chicago is wellpositioned to be the safest, or one of the safest, most affordable big cities in America. Within the next couple of years, we’re going to continue to double down on our work to drive violence down in the city. We’re going to build more affordable homes. We want to continue to expand opportunities for young people. But again, a safe, affordable, wellresourced school district that I’m hopeful that as we are moving in that direction, that we’re able to see the full manifestation of the investments that we’ve made so far.
The Pope is a Sox fan. How do you [a Cubs fan] feel about that?
Well, if anybody needed a pope to root for them, it’s the White Sox. ¬
Jim Daley is the Weekly’s investigations editor.
El alcalde Johnson a medio mandato
El alcalde se
sentó con el Weekly para hablar de sus primeros dos años en el cargo y más.
POR JIM DALEY TRADUCIDO POR JACQUELINE SERRATO
La semana pasada, el alcalde Brandon Johnson realizó una intensa campaña mediática para conmemorar el segundo aniversario de su inauguración. Johnson, exorganizador del Sindicato de Maestros de Chicago (CTU) y comisionado del Condado de Cook, llegó al Ayuntamiento gracias en gran parte al apoyo de organizadores sindicales, activistas, votantes negros de los lados sur y oeste, y votantes blancos progresistas del lado norte, en unas elecciones donde aproximadamente el 40% de los votantes registrados emitieron su voto.
Una inauguración enérgica y un ambicioso plan para transformar la forma en que la Municipalidad aborda sus problemas más urgentes —violencia, educación y vivienda, por nombrar algunos— pronto se toparon con desafíos. Cuando asumió el cargo, miles de solicitantes de asilo que habían sido trasladados en autobús a Chicago de Texas y otros estados dormían en el suelo de las estaciones de policía y en carpas mientras esperaban un lugar en el saturado sistema de albergues de la ciudad. La delincuencia violenta seguía estando por encima de los niveles prepandémicos.
En medio de estos desafíos, Johnson tropezó. Si bien su administración logró establecer un sistema de refugios improvisado para solicitantes de asilo, el exorbitante costo del esfuerzo y las opciones, como ubicar a uno en una escuela cerrada de Woodlawn, enfurecieron a los residentes negros, quienes sintieron que sus necesidades, ignoradas durante mucho tiempo, se estaban volviendo a ignorar. El primer jefe de personal de Johnson, el veterano del Ayuntamiento, Rich
Guidice, renunció en menos de un año, lo que preocupó a algunos miembros del gobierno municipal. La alcaldía ha visto otros cambios de personal directivo desde entonces.
El alcalde ha tenido dificultades para impulsar su agenda legislativa en un Concejo Municipal cada vez más inquieto. Un referéndum que él promovió, que hubiera aumentado los impuestos sobre las ventas de bienes raíces millonarias, mientras que los hubiera reducido sobre las ventas más económicas, fue rechazado por los votantes. El Concejo Municipal rechazó por unanimidad su propuesta de aumento de $300 millones a los impuestos de propiedad durante el debate presupuestario del año pasado. Y la cancelación del contrato de los sensores de ShotSpotter por parte de Johnson cumplió una promesa de campaña, pero se encontró con una oposición tan feroz que ahora está considerando restablecer la tecnología de detección de disparos con armas de fuego. Johnson también ha logrado algunas victorias significativas. Una ordenanza que elimina los sueldos inferiores al salario mínimo para los trabajadores con propinas fue aprobada con su apoyo. A principios de este mes, el concejo aprobó el plan de "vivienda social ecológica" del alcalde, que crearía una organización municipal sin fines de lucro para impulsar el crecimiento de la vivienda asequible. Además, ha negociado un contrato generoso con su antiguo sindicato, consolidando el control del sistema escolar público, forzando la salida del director ejecutivo Pedro Martínez y nombrando a leales y activistas del sindicato de maestros para la junta
escolar. En lo que va de año, la delincuencia violenta ha disminuido significativamente en comparación con años anteriores, y abril registró la menor cantidad de homicidios en seis décadas.
En los próximos dos años, Johnson debe consolidar sus victorias, convencer a los concejales a que apoyen sus iniciativas y convencer a los votantes de que ha dado un giro a la situación. De no ser así, tiene tiempo para consolidar sus logros y esperar que se conviertan en un legado. Al cumplirse dos años, se reunió con el Weekly para hablar sobre sus logros, desafíos, teoría del cambio y el Papa.
La entrevista ha sido editada y condensada para mayor brevedad.
Jim Daley: ¿De cuáles logros de tus primeros dos años te sientes más orgulloso?
Alcalde Johnson: Mi principal prioridad es mantener la seguridad de la gente de la ciudad de Chicago, e históricamente, nos hemos enfrentado a una falta de inversión que, creo, ha influido en la violencia. Los delitos violentos han disminuido significativamente este año; ya estamos viendo una reducción del 22 por ciento, y eso tiene mucho que ver con el enfoque de gobierno de manos a la obra. Y a medida que construimos más viviendas asequibles —estoy muy orgulloso de ello— con nuestra inversión de $1.25 mil millones en vivienda y desarrollo económico, es la mayor en la historia de Chicago. Eso es transformador, ¿verdad?
Chicago también está respondiendo a nuestras inversiones en salud mental y conductual. Como sabrán, creo que el 40 por ciento de las llamadas al 911 históricamente han sido por crisis de salud mental. Por lo tanto, ahora que las fuerzas del orden ya no tienen la responsabilidad de acudir a esas interacciones, se les ha dado más tiempo para responder a los delitos más violentos. También reabrimos tres clínicas de salud mental.
Estoy muy orgulloso de que, como saben, vamos a contratar hasta 29,000 jóvenes para trabajos de verano. Esto representa un increíble aumento del 45% desde que asumí el cargo. Todo esto ha contribuido a reducir la violencia en la
ciudad de Chicago. Queda mucho trabajo por hacer. Pero me alientan los resultados que hemos obtenido hasta ahora.
En cuanto a abordar las causas económicas de la violencia, ¿cómo se aborda un problema tan grave?
No se aborda de forma aislada. El sector público tiene una responsabilidad. Eso es lo que yo controlo. Pero también tengo la responsabilidad de involucrar a las empresas. Y muchas de ellas se han unido para ayudarnos a profesionalizar y expandir el sector de los trabajadores comunitarios de intervención en casos de violencia. Y es ese tipo de enfoque público-privado el que realmente nos permite abordar estos grandes problemas. Así que, cuando pienso en el empleo juvenil, no se trata solo del gobierno —y haremos todo lo posible para asegurar que el gobierno cumpla con su parte— sino que no se trata solo del gobierno ofreciendo empleo juvenil.
Sin embargo, hay un programa del que estoy muy orgulloso: el programa piloto que iniciamos el año pasado, en el que contratamos a setenta y cinco estudiantes de último año de las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago para participar en un programa piloto que presta servicios en nuestro departamento de Calles y Saneamiento.
Pero también tenemos que construir más viviendas económicas para que esos mismos jóvenes puedan formar una familia en la ciudad de Chicago, a la vez que animamos a nuestros líderes empresariales a invertir en el empleo juvenil, pero también a pensar en cómo nos unimos colectivamente para aliviar la carga de los impuestos en los trabajadores.
Así que: $11 mil millones en nuevas inversiones el año pasado. El desarrollo PSI Quantum es lo más importante: 37,000 empleos en la construcción. Ya hemos [invertido] $8 mil millones este año. Agilizando el proceso para que sea más fácil y productivo hacer negocios con la Ciudad de Chicago. Todo eso contribuye a reducir la violencia en la ciudad, y hasta ahora está funcionando. Pero no podemos bajar la guardia.
Hablando de PSI Quantum, la Municipalidad tuvo una reunión comunitaria donde hubo una oposición
significativa de la comunidad. ¿Cómo están incorporando esas voces?
Organizando reuniones comunitarias. Es decir, estamos escuchando a la gente. Entiendo algunas de sus preocupaciones e incluso su inquietud al respecto. Lo haremos juntos. Miren, no hemos tenido inversión en el lado sureste de Chicago en más de treinta años; es la primera administración en traer ese tipo de inversión allí. No queremos que la inversión sea recibida con hostilidad, ¿verdad? Queremos asegurarnos de que estas inversiones realmente se centren en el desarrollo integral de toda esa región, lo que realmente beneficiará a toda la ciudad de Chicago.
Su administración negoció un contrato muy justo con el Sindicato de Maestros de Chicago (CTU), y las escuelas tienen un déficit proyectado de $500 millones. ¿Cómo van a pagar ese contrato?
Analizaremos diversas maneras de abordarlo, pero realmente requerirá la colaboración de todos. Y fue la motivación detrás del grupo de trabajo que establecí mediante una orden ejecutiva para ayudar a analizar cómo resolver nuestros desafíos a nivel municipal; todo funcionará en conjunto. Miren, la negligencia financiera y la malversación finalmente han salido a la luz; ya no hay que postergar el asunto. Tenemos que abordar esto a corto y largo plazo. Y trabajaré con el nuevo liderazgo de las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago, junto con la Junta de Educación, para generar ideas y soluciones que todos podamos respaldar y que no requieran retener ni reducir las inversiones que ya hemos realizado.
¿Qué les dices a quienes consideran que tu esfuerzo por nombrar a tu jefe de personal como director ejecutivo de las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago (CPS) consolida el control de las escuelas?
Todavía no he tomado una decisión sobre el liderazgo de las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago. Lo haré, y esa persona reflejará mi opinión. No se trata de que una entidad controle a la otra. Se trata de que todos trabajemos juntos, y ese es mi compromiso.
¿Qué lamentas de tus primeros dos años y
qué lecciones has aprendido?
Sí que he aprendido algunas lecciones. Una de esas lecciones realmente difíciles es que el hecho de que hagas cosas buenas no significa que todos lo sepan, o incluso si saben el qué, puede que no sepan el por qué. Y una de las cosas que lamento es que cuando estaba creando el gobierno para impulsar la transformación que estamos experimentando ahora, reuniendo a todos los líderes de la ciudad de Chicago que me ayudarían a dirigir este gobierno, la coalición que me eligió, yo tenía la responsabilidad de asegurarme de que esa coalición también se mantuviera.
Para los próximos dos años, ¿qué es lo que más esperas lograr?
Creo que Chicago está bien posicionada para ser la ciudad más segura, o una de las más seguras y asequibles de Estados Unidos. En los próximos dos años, seguiremos redoblando nuestros esfuerzos para reducir la violencia en la ciudad. Construiremos más viviendas asequibles. Queremos seguir ampliando las oportunidades para los jóvenes. Pero, insisto, un distrito escolar seguro, asequible y con buenos recursos, que espero que estemos avanzando en esa dirección —que podamos ver el pleno reflejo de las inversiones que hemos realizado hasta ahora.
El Papa [León XIV] es aficionado de los Sox. ¿Qué opinas [siendo un aficionado de los Cubs] al respecto?
Bueno, si hubiera alguien que necesitara un Papa que los apoye, son los Medias Blancas. ¬
Jim Daley es el editor de investigaciones del Weekly.
‘There Are No Places For Us To Just Be Free’
Black teenagers spoke to The TRiiBE about teen trends, how they’re treated in the Loop, and what solutions could fill the gap in youth-oriented spaces.
BY TONIA HILL
This story was co-produced in partnership with
Tinsight to add to these conversations, but because adults believe they know what’s best.
adults are trying to decide what to do with large teen hangouts called “trends.” Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd Ward) has proposed a revised curfew ordinance that would give the Chicago police superintendent and city’s top community safety leader the power to declare a curfew in response to a teen trend, or gathering of twenty or more. The ordinance passed out of the Public Safety Committee on Tuesday and may have gotten a vote at the full City Council on Wednesday. edition was printed before City Council met to vote on the curfew. Check our website for the latest on the curfew.
owners and community-based violence prevention workers have been discussing how they currently respond to large teen gatherings. A series of recommendations from each meeting will be incorporated into a possible long-term plan that includes input from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Mayor’s Office, as well as community-based organizations, business owners, teenagers and residents.
31st Street Beach. There were about fifty officers stationed at different beach entrances, as well as sixteen violence prevention workers. The trend ended up not materializing.
“We can’t stop the kids from coming, but we can stop conflicts from arising when they do come,” said James Mitchell, field manager for Metropolitan Peace Initiatives’ Crisis Prevention and Response Unit (CPRU). “We want our young people to get out, experience the city, and do things. So we’re always going to welcome them. Our goal is to make sure that they do it safely and responsibly.”
The trends, and the teens involved, are often perceived as violent and dangerous, but that’s not a fair characterization, according to CPRU associate director Rodney Phillips.
“We always talking about the kids, but you don’t hire them. You tell them what you feel they should have and how they should think, and right there is where we go wrong,” Phillips said. “How you going to dissect or solve a problem without the people you deem the cause of it? So you have to have them in a room.”
On May 8, Deputy Mayor of Community Safety Garien Gatewood
hosted a roundtable discussion and field trip for about 100 adults. They visited multiple teen trend hotspots in Streeterville, including the AMC Theatre and Target on Illinois Street and Ogden Plaza Park. The goal of the trip was for attendees to brainstorm, collaborate and
build out an intervention and prevention response for large-scale teen gatherings.
Teens were noticeably absent because it was held during school hours.
On May 10, police and violence prevention workers prepared for an expected teen trend to take place at
I spoke with eight Black teenagers from the South and West Sides to understand their experiences. They spoke about the challenges of meeting up with friends, the lack of neighborhood spaces to gather in majority-Black communities, and their thoughts on the city’s proposed revised youth curfew policy. Here are their stories, as told to TRiiBE systemic racism reporter Tonia Hill.
Teen Trends at 31st St Beach on May 15, 2025. Photo by Ash Lane for The TriiBE
Sania Belanger, nineteen, Garfield Park
Sania Belanger is a Lincoln Park High School graduate who is currently attending Howard University. She began going to teen trend events as a middle-school student before 2020.
They were nice trends. We mostly bonded over the internet now, but I feel like then it was more likely for us to get up and get outside. I didn’t really go to many trends downtown because sometimes teens would be doing things that weren’t good. I feel like now you can’t go to a trend without any type of violence. Before, it was controllable, but now it’s not really controllable. My mom would allow me to attend a teen trend event if they were in a set place. She didn’t like me wandering around. There would usually be more than 100 kids. Sometimes we’d meet at the Roosevelt Icon Theatre, the MLK Jr. Roller Skating Rink or the skating rink in Markham. When it was warm, we’d meet at North Avenue Beach or 31st Street Beach.
Hanging out with friends always involves spending money. There weren’t many spaces that I could go to in my neighborhood that were free.
I feel like alders are missing the fact that teens need a space, a space that is welcoming and a space that doesn’t really limit them. There are rules everywhere, but I feel like there should be a space where teens can meet up and not be watched by 100 policemen. Community centers are needed everywhere for teens to hang out. I still think about the trend events at Markham Skating Rink. It was a treasure because it was a party room for kids, and we could go skating.
You could do whatever. But I feel like that’s what Chicago lacks right now. I feel like there’s no place for teens to meet. Curfews should be enforced, but if it’s applied unfairly, it could lead to things going wrong and some kids may not even be doing anything wrong.
Nevaeh Beard, seventeen, Englewood
Nevaeh Beard is a senior at Gary Comer College Prep. She avoids attending teen trends because of what happened to sixteen-year-old Seandell Holliday, who was fatally shot during a teen meetup at Millennium Park in 2022. They met in eighth grade through mutual friends at Curtis Elementary School.
Normally, my friends and I go to public places, like an arcade or Sky Zone in Schererville, Indiana. We do that because sometimes there are people around who tend to have a certain type of animosity.
I don’t really know about any cheap or free hangout spots in Englewood, but there’s always something going on, like fights or stuff with other kids that leads to violence. After school, my friends and I go to the library in Grand Crossing and help librarians with the community garden or any other activities that they’re hosting. In the summertime, I go to the beach or pool with my friends at community parks like Rowan Park.
When I was a freshman, one of my close friends [Seandell Holliday] had went to a downtown trend in Millennium Park, and he ended up getting shot and killed. So, learning about what happened, I never wanted to attend any big trends, parties or just anything that involves being around a large group. I would rather be in a smaller, closed space where I feel protected.
Before what happened to Seandell, I didn’t feel welcome at Millennium Park. It feels like we have to stay inside or only go to certain neighborhoods and places to enjoy
ourselves. It’s sad to say, but mostly the places that aren’t in our neighborhoods are the best places in the city. I feel like that’s where we have to go to have fun.
Aniya Winters, fifteen, Avalon Park
Aniya Winters is a student at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy High School. She said she doesn’t feel that there are enough dedicated youth spaces in the neighborhood.
I typically go to museums or aquariums in Chicago when they have free days. I also like to go to the park or the mall, even if I don’t buy anything. Window shopping is very fun. I don’t typically do anything in Avalon Park because there isn’t much else to do other than the park district. The park is green and always open to teenagers.
But other than that, there’s nothing too interesting in my neighborhood. Avalon Park is not really like a neighborhood that’s intended for children. It’s a lot of businesses, and it’s nothing for the youth to do other than go to the Avalon Park itself. But it does get boring if that’s somewhere you're constantly going and it’s the only thing in your neighborhood for you. I have been to the Loop with friends, and I do feel like it’s welcoming for all age groups. Downtown is so busy, and it’s just fun; it’s a nice place to be.
I feel like a curfew should be encouraged, but I don’t know if this should really be mandatory, because Chicago is not the safest city to be living in, especially for somebody under the age of eighteen. So, a reasonable curfew should be encouraged, but if it’s mandatory, it might feel like too many restrictions on a teenager living in the neighborhood.
Dereon Boone, seventeen, Roseland
Dereon Boone is a student at Butler College Prep. She enjoys expressing herself through art and hanging out with friends in Chinatown.
As a busy person, I make time as much as I can with my friends. I’m an introvert, so I’ve made most of my friends from my school and through an After School Matters, visual arts program at Gately Park Stadium. Not only have I created lots of good paintings, but I’ve also made some great friends.
My friends and I mostly go to Chinatown, so there’s this underground food court that we always go to. On the outside, it may look like an abandoned building, but once you go inside, it's all colorful, and there are many restaurants and stores.
Our only transportation is either the bus or the train, so that’s the only time I want to make sure that I have money so I can go home and get there safely. We also skate, so we sometimes go to skate parks. Movies are cool, but sometimes the movies we want to see are rated R.
In some other places, like Navy Pier, we can’t get inside because we’re not old enough. So far, those were like the only places I’ve been, like, downtown. Chinatown is very nice, but there could be some more, like, chill hangout spots, indoors for all ages, not just until you have an ID and stuff like that. Because, I mean, Chicago, it’s very nice. There are lots of places to go to, but you either have to have an adult with you or be eighteen. I haven’t heard of teen trends before, but I have tried going to Millennium Park with friends. We couldn’t get inside alone because we needed a parent.
Elijah Burkaklter, sixteen, West Pullman
Elijah Burkaklter is a student at Butler College Prep. He wants his neighborhood to be more inclusive for children so they can meet there instead of traveling outside their neighborhood.
We either go to the park, go to an amusement park sometimes, or hang out in other movies. We’re in the suburbs when we go to amusement parks or movies. If we want to go somewhere fancy, we all put our money together and go downtown to Millennium Park or Chinatown. Where I live, there are not many kids around, so it’s hard to really make friends in that area. But other than that, the people there are nice and cool.
I want my alderman to know that I’d like a safer community, because I believe my community is pretty safe, but a better community where more kids would want to come to hang out, more places for us to hang out with, instead of going so far, going down to Chinatown.
I’d like people or adults in my community to talk to kids more, so they can help us out with certain problems, because some teenagers do go through things that they might not want to talk about. So, I feel like if teens have more places to go to and talk to, my community would be better.
Calvin Kidd, seventeen, Bronzeville
Calvin Kidd is a student at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy. Kidd hasn’t ever been to a teen trend; he’s heard they can be dangerous, but he does meet up with friends at Millennium Park or at his parents' house.
My friends come to my studio at my parents’ house, which is cheap and free; they’ll come over, and we make music sometimes. So outside-wise, we’re probably somewhere, like downtown. You can just walk around and that’s cheap. I don’t think there are spaces in my neighborhood to come to. I wish there were more spaces like Gately Stadium Park in the neighborhood.
You have to walk around, which can be a vibe, and sometimes we walk towards the museum campus or Millennium Park. I learned about trends in school, but I’ve never been. They get dangerous. So I try to keep myself out of stuff like that. I do feel welcome when I’m downtown with friends. People speak. I do feel more comfortable as long as I see people who look like me. I want my alderman to help us keep the neighborhood clean and make sure everybody has what they need.
Damarion Spann, sixteen, North Lawndale
Damarion Spann is a student at The Collins Academy High School. A member of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Youth Commission and My Block, My Hood, My City’s explorer program, Spann spends the majority of his time at school during the weekdays because it’s open daily from 6am to 8pm. He would like to see more youth-centered spaces for teenagers in North Lawndale.
My school is really the hangout spot. We have an open gym and we have workouts together. It’s free of charge. So that’s really like the main place we go. If it’s not that, we’ll usually go to the movie theater in Melrose Park. I go downtown often, a lot, because I work in the Mayor’s Office, as a youth commissioner. My friends and I went downtown together just this year, two, three times to the Navy Pier, and we always attend the My Block, My Hood, My City downtown day.
I’ve been to one teen trend at 31st Street Beach, and it wasn’t like that negative experience. It was really like that exposure of Black culture. There were dancers and speakers. It felt like it was unified where I was, but like, throughout downtown, there were more teens and like, violence may occur, but where I was, it wasn’t like that. What youth need in general is safe spaces. We need spaces where we can gather in our community. We shouldn’t have to be downtown.
As a Black teenager downtown, it does not seem like a person like me, who has dreadlocks and is African American, is welcomed downtown. It feels like you’re invading someone’s space, but the space exists for everyone. I totally disagree with the new curfew. I feel like it treats all youth like we’re criminals or troublemakers. They’re basing this on small events that have happened up north. They’re making a mass movement on all youth.
I feel like it’s racism. It strips our freedom to go out and explore and enjoy these public spaces that Chicago brags about and says they have to offer, but they’re so quick to take it away. It just gives me a sense of punishment. It gives me a sense [that] some people want to only protect downtown, because why don’t we make these rules in our neighborhoods, do we not care about them? If we don’t want the violence downtown, we’re pushing it into our neighborhoods but not addressing the real issue.
Olasheni Giwa, seventeen, South Shore
Olasheni Giwa is a senior at Kenwood Academy High School. She said she feels young people don’t have places to go in South Shore. When she does go downtown with friends, she doesn’t feel welcome.
There are no places for us to just be free. The only thing that you can do for real is walk to the store, get some snacks and then go back home. I want my alderman to convince the mayor, or somebody who has enough money, to build a space where teenagers can eat, hang out, and have fun without all these restrictions making us feel like children. There’s really no other solution to these teen takeovers.
Most of my friends are from Kenwood; sometimes we go to the movies or gather at one another’s homes. I don’t really go to youth trends much because, honestly, when they get too crowded, they start getting broken up. It’s not fun anymore because the police are there and they’re annoying.
It’s not safe to hang out in local parks in South Shore because shootings happen. When I do go downtown with friends, I feel like I’m being racially profiled. I could be walking in the store downtown and they’re already following me. It’s just so uncomfortable.
It’s just like this feeling, like you don’t really belong there, because you don’t see as many people who look like you. ¬
Tonia Hill is The TRiiBE’s systemic racism reporter. Her work focuses on the intersections between criminal justice, policing, politics and grassroots organizing.
Do Curfews Make Us Safer?
Academic research on curfew laws in the U.S. has found mixed results.
BY JIM DALEY
This story was co-published in partnership with The TRiiBE
Do curfews increase public safety? What scant research there is has found mixed results in the United States.
Chicago’s curfew was 11pm until 2022, when a fatal shooting of a teenager at one of the large downtown gatherings known as “trends” prompted then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot to change the weekend curfew to 10pm, with a 6pm curfew in Millenium Park.
Now, in response to similar gatherings this year, the City Council is considering an ordinance that would allow police to call a “snap” curfew at any time of day—even the morning—within some area defined by police. An on-scene commander would announce the curfew thirty minutes before giving a dispersal order. Under-eighteenyear-olds who defy such orders could be taken into custody until their parent or guardian picks them up, and parents or guardians could be fined $500. Editor’s note: This edition was printed before City Council met to vote on the curfew. Check our website for the latest on the curfew.
City Council members supporting the proposal have invoked public safety to justify these expanded police powers, saying they can be used to reign in “trends” that get out of hand.
Curfew is rarely enforced in Chicago. Data obtained by the Weekly from the Chicago Police Department via a publicrecords request shows that curfew violations doubled the year Lightfoot moved the curfew up—to fourteen. Last year, nine individuals were cited for violating curfew. Since 2020, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has issued a total of fifty-eight curfew citations. While they were scattered across the city, the South Side had the largest share, at 42 percent.
There aren’t many recent studies examining how curfews impact public
safety in the United States, and those published in the last decade have found contradictory effects. One even found that changing the curfew time can have the opposite of its intended effect. There’s apparently no research on the effects of giving police power to declare curfews anytime, possibly because this may be the first time it’s been tried.
“When we think about a curfew, it’s really general in a normal setting,” said Jillian Carr, an Associate Professor of Economics at Purdue who co-authored a 2018 study on curfews and gun violence.
“In [Chicago’s] case, you’re really targeting a group, rather than targeting all the youth. You’re targeting folks who had already planned on being at a place at a time.”
A 2011 study published in <i>The American Law and Economics Review</ i> found that when a general curfew is established, youth arrests for violent and property crimes drop by nearly 15 percent in the first year and remain about 10 percent lower in subsequent years. The study also found that parents, not police, appear to be the primary enforcers of curfew laws,
because curfews’ effectiveness wasn’t linked to how many cops were tasked with enforcing it. Its author did not respond to requests for comment.
It’s unclear if parents would be as effective in enforcing snap curfews since they’d have no way of knowing ahead of time if, when, and where a snap curfew would be implemented.
Curfews may sometimes have the opposite of their intended effect. When Washington, D.C. moves its curfew time up one hour each fall, nighttime gun violence actually increases, according to a 2018 study Carr co-authored.
In July and August, the weekday curfew in D.C. is midnight. During the school year, the weekday curfew is 11pm. Year-round, it lifts at 6am.
To examine how that change impacted gun violence, the researchers used ShotSpotter data to compare gunshot frequency during the two different curfew hours, which they referred to as the “switching hour.” They also looked closely at the days immediately surrounding the curfew change (a technique scientists call
“regression discontinuity”) to assess its effect on gunfire.
On average, they found there were more ShotSpotter gunshot alerts during the earlier switching hour, even when controlling for other factors like seasonal changes in gunfire. While ShotSpotter alert data can be subject to false alarms, Carr said that the rate of such false positives wouldn’t be affected by a change in the curfew alone.
She added that her results could be due to a concept developed by Jane Jacobs, a 20th-century urban studies theorist and activist who championed the idea that safety is inherently tied to community connectedness—a concept University of Chicago Crime Lab founder Jens Ludwig has recently promoted.
“A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street,” Jacobs wrote. “A deserted city street is apt to be unsafe.”
Carr added that her findings aren’t directly comparable to the kind of snap curfews the City Council is considering because it would likely be enforced in areas already frequented by tourists and other passers-by. She added that it could improve safety for well-intentioned teenagers, but it could also push some crimes elsewhere.
“And I think that is obviously appealing to folks who have investment, whether just because they’re the aldermen or because businesses have you in these areas,” she said. “But it’s also potentially not really fair to the individuals who are now being victimized elsewhere.”
Carr also raised concerns about selective enforcement of the proposed curfew.
“Is this going to be applied evenly to children and youth and young adults of different races?” she said. “I really worry that this might empower officers to apply this new curfew in a way that is discriminatory.”¬
Jim Daley is the Weekly’s investigations editor.
Illustration by Lilly Sundsbak
What Happened to Chicago’s Third Spaces?
Chicago remembers when teens could hang at the mall, juke at the roller rink, or dance battle at nightclubs.
BY CORLI JAY, THE TRIIBE
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the Southwest Side’s Ford City Mall and far South Side’s Evergreen Plaza were places where teenagers were welcome to congregate, meet with friends and hang out on the weekends. Chicago had multiple skating rinks, teen clubs, bowling alleys, school-sponsored House parties and welcoming spaces—often called third spaces—where teens could kick it.
Those were different times. Most of today’s malls have “youth escort policies,” prohibiting the tween and teen set from going to the mall by themselves on certain days unless accompanied by an adult over twenty-one years of age. Outdoor events have become heavily policed. Most skating rinks have closed. Bowling alleys are in decline. And teen clubs? What’s that?
All those places, these “third spaces,” were locations that welcomed Gen-X Chicago kids (and the oldest of the Millennials) as a gathering spot to just, be, outside of home or school. Those spaces have largely disappeared. Mall culture, for example, nearly died as online shopping and social media-inspired dropshipping consumed the consumer. Accidents, shootings and insurance issues led to the closure of teen clubs. So today, the third space for the under-twenty-one crowd has not just eroded, it just might be extinct.
“I graduated high school in ’96, so let me tell you, my older cousins and siblings, they were from the era when house music first started,” said Malika McCollum,
forty-six, who grew up in AuburnGresham and Roseland. “So when I was little, I was so fascinated. I couldn't wait to get in high school to go to the parties.”
McCollum remembers the club scene back then. Those parties shaped the house music genre in Chicago. She spent her four years in high school dancing and partying—safely, due to the city’s youthcentered social scene.
"We had all these different dance groups,” she said, fondly naming the 1990s Chicago dance group House O Matics. “We had talent shows, hair competition shows, where everybody would go and dance throughout the city in different neighborhoods.”
Schools also played an essential role
in the teen social scene of the 1970s and ’80s. During a 2019 panel about high schools’ role in the house and dance scene, house DJs such as Celeste Alexander and Kirk Townsend detailed why school “sock hops” were pivotal.
“When Mendel was doing parties, kids were coming from all over the city, and they were there to party,” said Townsend, who is credited by the Chicago Black Culture Map as the teen party promoter who DJ’d at Mendel High School from 1975 until the school’s closure in 1988. “If they wanted to [go to] war, there were the dance group wars, where they did dance-offs.”
Austin resident Gheri Marshall remembers riding her bike with friends
from the West Side to the North Side. She also remembers going to schoolbased parties, or “sets.”
“They used to send out these things called pluggers,” said Marshall, sixtyfive. “And everybody knew about these parties. That’s when they were playing the albums, long versions. And we would just have a ball.”
School sets eventually lost their luster due to the rise of gang violence in the city. According to Honor, Violence and Upward Mobility, A Case Study of Chicago Gangs During the 1970s and 1980s, gang activity in Chicago increased in 1979, with “a large number of gangrelated murders” occurring by 1981.
House music recording artist Danielle Sanders said that in her experience as a mother, she’s seen how violence, as well as cuts to school funding, have led to the decline of school parties.
Teens once found solace at clubs like Medusa’s in Lakeview, which offered a space for young adults to dance the night away in the company of their peers. It opened in 1983. By 1986 Medusa’s became known for its community of teenaged alt-music lovers. The nightclub, or “juice bar,” as it was called due to being an alcohol-free establishment, was popular with young adults across Chicagoland. It was also a haven for LGBTQ+ youth.
Medusa’s, which opened after the closure of the Warehouse—the historic club credited for the start of house music—further propelled the genre forward with its all-age parties that would start after midnight and last until
Illustration by Lilly Sundsbak
CULTURE
8:00 in the morning.
By the late ’80s, Medusa’s drew criticism from some neighbors in the 44th Ward, with some complaining of noisy and wild behavior from the teen clubbers. As a result, then-44th Ward Alderman Bernie Hansen pushed for an ordinance forcing juice bars to close at 2am on Friday and 3am on Saturday. Medusa’s closed in 1992 after the building’s owner refused to renew the club’s lease or sell to the club owner.
Sanders spoke on the prominence that youth-centered clubs once had in spaces like the South and West Loop. Sanders said that downtown revitalization efforts led by former Mayor Richard M. Daley made the area more of a tourist attraction and less of a city kid hangout.
“That was like a big deal, Daley kind of gentrifying and beautifying the area,” Sanders said. “A lot of those [teen and adult] clubs were in the South Loop. There used to be a row of clubs. They all got shut down for various reasons. A lot of it would be noise, especially as the condos came up.”
In 2001, Daley proposed an ordinance that would allow criminal penalties to be levied against building owners and managers who allowed drug use and solicitation, according to the Tribune. It was followed by the 2003 federal RAVE act, a byproduct of the 1980s- and 1990s-era War on Drugs, which fined and jailed party promoters if drug activity was found on their premises.
The crackdown in Chicago could be correlated to teenagers shifting to suburban areas to party the night away. Growing up in Harvey, thirty-six-yearold Chimeka Heard-Powell says the party scene as a teenager was coveted, adding that she and her group of friends were “extremely prominent in the party scene” and hosted get-togethers at various field houses and venue spaces.
“Riverdale, Dolton, Harvey, South Holland, Calumet City, anything that touched Sibley, essentially. We all grew up going to the same place,” Heard-Powell said. “You only had a handful of childrenfriendly party areas.”
Describing how her generation would also sneak into clubs, HeardPowell shouted out Nitro, a popular
nightclub in the western suburb of Stone Park, where older teens would congregate.
“By the time we was eighteen,” she said, “it was more fitting of you to go to a place like Nitro, because you couldn’t get an actual club."
Nitro’s popularity intersected with the 1990s iteration of house music, known as juke music or ghetto house. A video posted on a Facebook page called Nitro Reunion pays homage to the venue and shows young Black club-goers in oversized T-shirts dancing to a house mix of DJ Unk’s 2006 record “Walk it Out.” The club, located at 3815 W. Lake Street in Stone Park, operated from 1997 to 2008. Today, that location is a strip club.
Many of those who spoke to <I>The TRiiBE</i> reminisced on the days of the parties when the dance form of juking was prominent. Similar to how teen clubs and school sets cultivated a space for house music and the jackin’ scene in the ’90s, juke also showed up in skating rinks throughout Chicago.
B. Kadijat Towolawi, thirty-seven, who grew up in Uptown, remembers the days at Rainbo Skating Rink in the North Side neighborhood. She also remembers news reports of an “investigation” into juke parties, which she believes led to the rink’s closure. Rainbo was demolished in 2003. The site is now a mixed-use housing complex named Rainbo Village, Condos & Townhomes.
“Parents were just enraged, enraged, because of what was happening at these parties,” Towolawi said. “Looking back as a fully grown adult, it got kind of crazy. It was basically almost dry-humping. [The news] was saying that girls are being sexually harassed. This is almost in comparison to a young version of Freaknik, that’s how they were trying to [portray it]. The parties were still going on, but it slowly started to die down. And that’s when it was also like a boom of the basement birthday parties.”
Other popular rinks that hosted both skates and jukes—often at the same time—are gone or trying to make a comeback. Markham Roller Rink shut its doors for renovations in 2022, according to the Markham Mayor’s office, and has not been open since. The South Side’s The Rink Fitness Factory skating rink is still
operating, and its new owners are skatecentric and also shifting focus to health, even selling vegan foods inside.
Another popular teen hang back then was Fifth City. The East Garfield Park location became a popular destination for teens to congregate and show off their dance skills, including trendy Chicago dances like the percolator, footworking, and bobbing. Those same teens were often featured on the public access TV station CAN-TV channel 19.
Magan Marshall, thirty-seven, daughter of Gheri Marshall, said she remembers going to parties at Fifth City as early as eighth grade. It was where she met her "first fake boyfriend," and enjoyed the vibes.
“My mom was very trusting, but of course, we always say it’s a different time, and we were able to have fun, but it felt good,” said the younger Marshall. “Even just hanging out on the street in our garages was a party to us.”
Heard-Powell credits youth culture’s embrace of drill music as the reason for the demise of the juke party.
“I hate to sound like an old lady, but I honestly feel like there were a couple of components that contributed to the downfall” of teen third spaces, she said. “The trend in music style, right? When we were young, it was no such thing as drill. We did have the gang bangers, and you know who the gang bangers were. That was a whole separate entity from the dance [guys]."
Heard-Powell believes lines got blurred between the gang and dance crowds, which led to dancing becoming uncool at functions. “With the drill era, it gradually changed the culture.”
Former 5th Ward Alderwoman Leslie Hairston echoed the sentiments of Heard-Powell, though she also credits the commercialization of gun culture.
“Once the streets came into the party, it became something you couldn’t do financially,” she said, citing the risks of youth clubs.
Guns, gangs and their accompanying playlists did take over the city for a few years. The original, week-long Taste of Chicago was cancelled and remixed after a mass shooting. Once the tourists were endangered, policies had to change.
Sanders saw this shift in real time. She’s seen increased fear in the concept of Black youth congregating in public spaces, which she believes has led to the decline in third spaces.
“People in general have a fear of young people, and you see that now some of it is justified when you see some of the violence and actions,” she said. “I don’t want stuff to pop off, because stuff pops off. Then there’s another part of me that thinks of my son. He goes to the beach just like I do, because he just wants to hang out and meet people, you know, like we all used to do.”
Magan Marshall agrees that today’s teens are criminalized for being themselves,
“Our parents let us go because they felt it was safe,” Marshall said. “They know that, ‘I can drop them off there,’ and then we gonna get picked up at 11:00. It was so much of a community aspect of it.”
Without a dedicated space to party, a hang out becomes a police problem.
“I’m from the West Side. Normally people say we loiter, but we like to hang,” Marshall said. “Hang out in the front. Hanging out in the middle of the street... We would be outside on somebody’s porch. When they see youth in numbers, then it’s automatically a problem, versus like, ‘Oh, they're just, like, out enjoying themselves.’”
Sanders said she wants youth to be able to enjoy the city like she and her peers once did.
“You can’t go to the movies without bringing somebody—an adult—with you. So, where do you go?” she said. “We down these kids and say they don't have any social skills. But, where [are] they gonna go where they’re not policed?” ¬
Corli Jay is The TRiiBE’s community investment reporter.
Op-Ed: Black and Brown Youth Need Commitment, Not Criminalization
Can we build a system that makes room for our freedom?
BY KOFI ADEMOLA AND REYNIA JACKSON, GOODKIDS MADCITY
My first time speaking in front of the City Council, with Mayor Richard M. Daley at the helm, was in the 1990s as a teenager arguing against the so-called anti-gang ordinance. What I didn’t know then was how this racist policy was connected to a long historical arc of Chicago controlling, regulating and brutalizing young Black citizens in the name of law and order. It is an arc that dates back to 1919, when white beach-goers decided that seventeen-year-old Eugene Williams’ life should be ended for crossing an invisible segregation line in Lake Michigan, sparking racialized violence against people in Black neighborhoods that would later be dubbed the Red Summer.
In the 1950s it was well known that the Chicago police would regularly pick up Black youth to intimidate them with beatings and arrest. The1962 documentary Lord Thing had firsthand testimonies of Vice Lords leaders who said they organized their group in the St. Charles Juvenile Correctional Facility after suffering such abuses. In the late 1960s, the Chicago police and FBI assassinated twenty-one-year-old Chairman Fred Hampton and twentytwo-year-old Mark Clark of the Black Panther Party, whose only threat was a free breakfast program for children and a free health care clinic for poor, marginalized Chicagoans on the West Side.
So I ask: when have Black youth felt safe and been able to move freely around the most segregated city in the world? Why, in 2025, are Black youth still criminalized and discouraged to leave their poverty-stricken neighborhoods?
Kofi Ademola is the co-founder of GoodKids MadCity.
without the constant fear of being criminalized, or when the only time we see an authority figure is when we're being stopped, searched, arrested, or fined? This is not teaching us to be responsible. It's teaching us that we don’t belong. All it tells us is that the city that raised us has no space for our joy, our curiosity, or our growth. Our communities aren’t suffering because teenagers are outside enjoying ourselves. Our communities are suffering because schools are underfunded, youth centers are shutting down, mental health services are scarce, and jobs for young people are almost nonexistent. We’re criminalizing the symptoms of a system that has failed to care for its young.
Ysegregated city. In Chicago, simply existing in our communities has always come with surveillance, suspicion, and the constant threat of criminalization. Our joy is policed, our movement restricted, and our presence treated like a problem. We’re told when we can be outside, where we’re allowed to gather, and how we’re supposed to exist— all under the guise of “public safety.” But this isn’t about keeping us safe. It’s about control. It’s about maintaining a system that has never made room for our freedom.
Soon, just being a teenager in Chicago could land you in handcuffs, slapped with a ticket, pushed out of public space—and pulled into the criminal legal system. Not because you’ve done anything wrong, but because some City Council members want to pass a “snap curfew” ordinance. The law would hand broad power to police to call rolling curfews. Under these curfews, police can shut down parks, beaches, and public spaces at any time of day—all in
response to so-called “mass gatherings” of twenty or more people. But the ordinance doesn’t set clear boundaries for where the curfew starts or ends.
That kind of vague, stretched-out language gives the system wiggle room to target and to single us out, while calling it safety.
This is not protection. This is punishment.
The snap curfew proposal is not about keeping kids safe. It’s about control. It’s about policing presence instead of addressing absence: the absence of resources, support systems, safe spaces, and trust in our communities. When policies are passed that treat us as threats rather than as members of the community, you fail us. And when you increase police presence instead of community investment, you plant seeds of trauma, not safety.
Ask yourself: what happens when you lock young people out of public spaces? What happens when we no longer have spaces where we can express ourselves
What we need are not curfews. We need commitments. We need investments in after-school programs, mentorship opportunities, and spaces where youth can express themselves without fear. We need restorative justice, not punishment.
We need the Peace Book, which is GoodKids MadCity’s youth-led, community-supported ordinance that invests in Chicago’s young people and centers our knowledge, our brilliance, and our lived experience to heal the root causes of harm. We don’t need a law that expands the carceral state. We need a policy that sees the humanity in us, not just our mistakes.
Because the truth is, when you treat young people like criminals, it makes us feel like this system was never meant for us. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, it hasn’t been.
But if you choose to believe in us—to support us, guide us, and give us the space to grow — we will rise. All of us. And when we rise, our communities rise with us.
Reynia Jackson is a youth organizer with GoodKids MadCity. ¬
Abel grins while working on a tree.
Photo collage by Shane Tolentino
What’s It Like to Raise Teens in 2025?
Three parents share their thoughts on teen takeovers, the curfew, and more.
BY CHIMA IKORO
This story was co-published in partnership with The TRiiBE
With the weather warming up and the school year winding down, young people in Chicago are spending their weekends— and soon, weekdays as well—looking for something to do.
They might find there isn’t much out there for them. Third spaces have disappeared or been cut off from teenagers, and the COVID-19 pandemic locked many at home for months. Not long ago malls in and around Chicago were the go-to spot for high schoolers with nothing to do, which eventually led to parental supervision rules at Water Tower Place and a youth escort policy at Ford City Mall. These restrictions essentially ban teens seventeen or younger from being at these malls starting Friday evening and spanning the entire weekend, unless they’re accompanied by a parent or adult over twenty-one.
In that gap, social media—which may be to blame for higher rates of boredom in young people—provides teenagers with access to constant communication with each other. It has also provided a way to quickly organize large gatherings known as “trends.” At times, violence has erupted at trends.
“Trends,” also called “teen takeovers,” have resurfaced year after year. They’re often met with a massive police response, and when they’ve gotten out of hand or turned violent, city officials have called for curfews. Then-Mayor Lightfoot
moved the weekend curfew up one hour permanently in 2022 after a fatal shooting at a teen takeover in Millenium Park.
Now, the City Council is considering an ordinance that would allow police to call a “snap” curfew at a large gathering and give teenagers in the area thirty minutes to disperse. Any who refuse could see their parents face fines that would
increase with repeated violations. Editor’s note: This edition was printed before City Council met to vote on the curfew. Check our website for the latest on the curfew.
Another response is to ask— sometimes facetiously—where the teenagers’ parents are.
To get insight about the complex answers to that question, the Weekly
sat down with three parents of Black teenagers to discuss their experiences raising them in the age of TikTok and trends.
These interviews were edited for length and clarity.
Abel grins while working on a tree.
Illustration by Shane Tolentino
Camella Clark was born and raised in Altgeld Gardens, a public housing complex on the far South Side. While attending Whitney Young High School, Clark had her eldest daughter at seventeen, and after obtaining her GED she went straight to nursing school. Her sixteen-year-old-son was a student at Morgan Park High School until recently when he moved out of state.
South Side Weekly: What are some differences you noticed between raising a teenager now in comparison to your first child, or what your parents may have experienced when raising you?
Camella Clark: So with my daughter, who’s the oldest, even though social media was around, it wasn't as prevalent as it is now. There was a little Facebook, I think Snapchat had just kind of came about, but now everything they do is recorded, and they don't know how to keep things private sometimes. They're not necessarily doing things that teenagers haven't done before, but there wasn't [as much of] a digital footprint.
How do you go about safety and monitoring your son? How do you keep up with what he has going on?
Anytime he downloads an app, I have to give permission for it to download. Now he lives with his dad, he just moved a few months ago, but we do spot checks on the phone. What are you looking at, what are you engaging in? But on the flip side, he's sixteen and he's not sheltered, he goes to school with other children. So even though we have certain rules and regulations and things that we live by, the people that he’s surrounded by may not, but he needs to know that we're watching him. That's how we try to keep a hand in what he's still doing; even though he's getting older, he's still only sixteen.
What are some spaces and activities that Black youth could benefit from on the South and West Sides?
Even though I grew up in public housing, we still had so many resources within the school system. We had gym, recess, we
had actual extracurriculars already built into the school schedules, so there wasn't a need to worry about after school stuff or before school stuff —and a lot of things were offered in our neighborhood schools. That's another issue; neighborhood schools have been demonized. Those students are considered the “leftovers” that couldn't get into this or that… . So it’s a lot of things going on that is really pushing kids to seek fun elsewhere.
What do you think about the proposed solution that would empower CPD to call snap curfews at any hour if they see a large teen gathering?
So that's a double-edged sword. You definitely want to keep the kids safe,
Ro Moore is a dad of two from the South Side. He now lives with his family in Naperville where he’s raised his now eighteen-year-old daughter. Aside from playing sports, as a teen he stayed out of the way and focused his time on making beats.
What contrasts do you notice when comparing raising a child in 2025 versus what your parents may have experienced?
Moore: The biggest difference is that the internet is so ingrained into this generation's personal life; they spend so much of their social energy online that they don't have a lot to give in real life.
When we were at school and
“Instead of just saying ‘stop this, you can’t do this,’ say, ‘y’all can’t do this, but we got this for y’all in the summer.’ Why aren’t they having somewhere they can go and just be? It just feels like there’s nothing for them to do so they go downtown and do what they’d normally do on their block.”
and you don't want things to get out of proportion to where police have to either step in and do something undesirable, or kids get in a mob and do things—you do want to prevent that, but also that curfew is, of course, targeted towards Black children. However, it might be a necessary evil, but that may lead to a slippery slope if they're just able to pull random curfews out of thin air. I'm like, hey, what's this, martial law? It is a slippery slope. But unfortunately, especially now it's the summertime, if they don't conduct themselves in the proper manner, it just might have to happen because you have other people that want to enjoy downtown without worrying about getting caught in a bunch of teenagers.
something embarrassing happened, fights, anything—we went home, and that was the end of it. Now, because of the internet, it just carries over. So something embarrassing happens, it's not over, everybody's on the same internet, on the same social media platforms, you guys are bringing school home with you. These kids suffer more with cyber bullying because you never really leave that community.
When you come home, you guys are on Twitch together, on Discord together, you guys hop on the game, you're on PlayStation together, you're on Xbox Live together. Since COVID, the world has become exponentially smaller for them to the point where they interact with each other without boundaries.
What do parents need from schools, city agencies, or communities to feel more equipped?
There needs to be more initiatives for the city to listen to the people, I don't even know where to start. There's just so much that both me and you can think of about different deficiencies, about the lack of care or lack of resources available for so many different areas, from back when you were in school, from back when I was in school, from back when my parents were in school, that's still prevalent today, When [residents in Wrigleyville] have a problem with some stuff, things change. When the South Side and the West Side speak about different things and show up to town halls, they're met with vitriol. They're met with suppression.
What do you think about the proposed curfew?
I think a lot of these policies being introduced aren't to stop these things from happening within our community, they're to stop <i>where</i> they happen. Because y'all didn't care, and y'all haven't cared, that this exact same thing has been happening to the South Side, to the East Side, and to the West Side. It’s when they come downtown and y'all pass a certain threshold, we got to do something about it because you're making other demographics feel uncomfortable. Everybody wants to come see the Mag Mile and the Bean and Buckingham Fountain, but don't nobody want to see that if all these teens are getting off the Millennium station line and coming up there and just being teenagers, they don’t want to do that if it's too many Black people.
Anytime they set rules or laws like this to disenfranchise one part of the community, it ends up negatively affecting the rest of the community, whether they mean to or not. That’s a historical fact.
What do you think is an alternative to the proposed curfew solutions?
If there were more age-friendly concerts, shows, exhibits, etc. How do we have all of these fantastic institutions, museums
and things, and there's nothing geared towards engaging the next generation?
Y'all not trying. You put all this effort into trying to blockade them from messing up what money you think is there, instead of engaging them and making money from them, making money with them.
Y'all missed the opportunities to engage and provide space for these communities, and instead just want to blockade them away. It's just gonna breed rebellion and contempt, and a lot of what you think you're preventing or stopping, you just exacerbate.
Lon Renzell Rudolph moved to Chicago to attend Columbia College in 2007. His daughter, who turns sixteen on May 21, goes to school in Alsip, a southwest suburb. As a teen, Rudolph frequented the local YMCA and teen night clubs, while his time spent at church helped him discover his love for music.
What are some challenges parents face raising teenagers, especially within the past five years?
I think social media was the biggest thing that I worried about, just like creeps and predators. But my daughter is not as vain as some people might be as teenagers, she’s recently finding herself. She's not influenced by what's happening and what other girls are doing around her— whatever girls are saying, what they're wearing, she’s not trying to wear the flyest, newest shit, but she’s gonna wear her thing and be comfortable within herself. I’m really seeing her grow into that, and it was definitely a worry of mine like “damn, am I gonna have to be this type of strict parent when she’s two to twelve years old and say ‘don’t go on the internet, don’t do these things, don’t wear these things, don’t talk like that’?” My parents were like that—very strict about how I talked, what I was doing, who my friends were. I felt like I was gonna do the
same thing, but with her I didn't have to do that. I was just very vocal with her and kept it honest.
What do parents need from schools, city agencies, and the communities that their teenagers are growing up in to feel supported?
Guidance counseling needs to be more [proactive about] getting the parents involved and talking to their kids. My kid doesn't have problems talking to us, but I know that's where a lot of parents go wrong—they don't know how to talk to their kids [especially] if they’re a little older. But I feel like if there was a therapist on site— the guidance counselor gets [more involved with] college prep and finding the best classes instead of like, “how are you doing today?” and “are there things you can't tell your parents that you need to let us [know]?” and I think that’s super huge. I feel like we need the school to just check in on our kids a lot more. We got parent-teacher conferences, we know what’s going on with their schedules and their schooling. But we need better mental [health] guidance, because then you wont have parents always questioning how their kid is doing and what their kid is doing. Then I also feel like there should be just a little bit more outlets for parents to do things with their kids or something that guides the relationship of a community at school.
What sort of spaces and activities do Black youth need more of?
I think they need more outlets to find out who they want to be at a younger age. I feel like I had to force that a little bit too when finding what I could get her in so she could learn the skills that she might be interested in. I think there needs to be more things that equip them to be the best version of themselves at an early age, whether it's entrepreneurship or if they want to go and just be a plumber. Not just the Career Days, parents have jobs that can bring kids in—Evanston High School does that; they have a mentorship program where the kids can [shadow an adult].
What do you think about the proposed
curfew?
I’m on both sides because I’ve been down there and there’s [people] acting a fool, jumping on cars, hopping in front of random people’s whips and stopping traffic etc., so I do understand why they’re doing that. It gets crazy down there, I even be like “damn, where all these kids come from?” This shit isn’t just random, they don’t got no where to go! I had the YMCA with my homies, we had somewhere to go to have our time and be around [each other], now having fun is just walking around and wreaking havoc a little bit. I do think there needs to be some control, but I feel like they need to help the kids. Instead of just saying “stop this, you can’t do this,” say “y’all can’t do this, but we got this for y’all in the summer.” Why aren’t they having somewhere they can go and just be? It just feels like there’s nothing for them to do so they go downtown and do what they’d normally do on their block.
What is the cause of the behaviors we might see in these large teen gatherings?
This isn't something that's new... but it’s huge. Now everybody wants to run a drill and got a shiesty [ski mask] on. Kids have that to look at and see rappers talking about that, what else are they to do? Heavy [Crownz] is doing a bunch of work in Englewood to help the community. If there was somebody like that in each community going in and helping and giving resources and giving them a space, I swear it would work— that's the beginning piece at least. It’s hard to say what would change things if we ain’t got the [resources], I’m trying to change things with what I got. I’m utilizing my space for that reason, but I would love to give back in a bigger way. I'm starting to do the workshops over at the library. That's what's going to help the kids; let them see a different outlet, I'll at least just start with one. If you pullin’ up somewhere consistently and we can create this sharing of knowledge, you would brighten up a kid's life. ¬
Chima Ikoro is the Weekly’s engagement editor.
What It Looks Like to Fight Back
In the last remaining building of the Jane Addams Homes, the National Public Housing Museum fights to preserve not just artifacts but dignity and justice.
BY NABEELA WASHINGTON
At the corner of Ada and Taylor Streets, where the wind whips between century-old brick and modern glass, the grand opening of the National Public Housing Museum (NPHM) drew an eager assembly in April. Former and current public housing residents from Cabrini-Green and Altgeld Gardens, city officials, media, and curious Chicagoans gathered to celebrate what had been years in the making.
The National Public Housing Museum occupies the last standing building of the Jane Addams Homes, which were closed in 2003 as part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) sweeping Plan for Transformation.
The museum preserves artifacts of America’s intricate relationship with public housing and actively challenges a national debate that has long erased the experiences of those who called these developments home.
With nearby construction signaling another wave of neighborhood transformation, the museum has positioned itself as a resistor—a cultural witness that refuses, even amid federal hostility to its mission, to separate its exhibits from the urgent questions of who deserves housing and whose stories deserve telling in America today. The museum is part of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, whose members are devoted to preserving the memory of painful historical events against censorship.
“This is a very important time to continue to tell the truth,” said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, associate professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Todd-Breland was one of many who celebrated the longawaited opening of the museum. She also
actively invites her students to explore the museum as a living classroom—a place where housing policy, racial justice, and community organizing intersect beyond textbook theories.
Todd-Breland has engaged with the museum’s programming in multiple capacities, particularly through the Beauty Turner Academy of Oral History, named after the longtime journalist, activist, and Robert Taylor Homes resident, which trains current and former public housing residents to document their communities' histories through oral storytelling. In fall 2024, she brought these perspectives into her “Urban Renewal and the Archive” course at UIC, which examines the history of urban redevelopment with special focus on Chicago’s Near West Side.
Todd-Breland described a particularly meaningful event where the
museum created an interactive experience at the Little Italy library. The staff brought an enormous map spanning several tables, marked with pins indicating locations where oral history contributors had lived. Participants—including neighborhood residents, former public housing residents, and local students—listened to these recorded stories together, creating an immersive engagement with oral histories.
This collaborative process of public memory impressed Todd-Breland enough that she invited Liú méi zhì huì, senior programs manager of the museum’s Oral History Archive & Collective, to bring the mapping activity to her classroom. Following the presentation, she took her students on a walking tour from UIC's campus to the museum site, allowing them to physically interact with spaces they had been studying.
The class concluded their experiential learning session in the garden adjacent to the museum, connecting academic study with place-based understanding as the museum's educational philosophy encourages.
While Todd-Breland has incorporated the museum into her academic curriculum, other visitors have found the space valuable as a point of comparison to national institutions.
Among the crowd that day, John Halloran, associate professor and coprogram director in the department of social work at Lewis University, reflected on the museum's distinctive methodology. “We took our two daughters to Washington, D.C. for spring break this year, and we went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture and to the National Museum of the American Indian—which both have a real social justice focus—and it was really a great way to see how different stories get told and to think about what message a place is trying to send. At the NPHM, the message I kept returning to was 'people lived here; this was their community'.”
Halloran emphasized the NPHM's deeply personal nature, noting how effectively the museum connected physical spaces and objects to the actual lives and experiences of residents. He observed that discussions about history and policy often become impersonally abstract, whereas the NPHM's particular strength lies in creating an environment where visitors can tangibly sense the humanity and lived realities of those who once called public housing home.
This sense of belonging is woven into the museum’s foundation. As guests step through the doorway of
Inside the National Public Housing Museum.
Photo by NaBeela Washington
the building, they’re greeted not with the usual museum formalities but with personalized welcomes that immediately reframe their relationship to the space around them.
“Welcome home,” said Dorian Nash to a former public housing resident who had lived in the Jane Addams Homes. It was their first time coming back to the building since it had turned into a museum.
Nash oversees the museum’s innovative workforce development program, explaining that it’s about “trying to find and seek great people within public housing and teach them a new skill...help them to build upon their careers.”
The NPHM has quickly established itself as “the nation’s largest archive of the stories of public housing residents,” featuring these narratives in podcasts, exhibits, research, and scholarship. The museum includes the Dr. Timuel Black Recording Studio and dedicated spaces for programs that address the racial wealth gap and create a cultural workforce that diversifies the museum profession.
Nash puts her own spin on workforce development by building on this foundation, ensuring that public housing residents aren’t just subjects of the museum’s exhibits but active educators, shaping how their stories are
the material evidence of the lives of Reverend Hatch’s family of ten (seven girls and one boy)—copies of Ebony and Jet magazine, a light-up Jesus portrait on the wall, treasured recipe cards for “Helen's Surprise”, a large antique color TV, period furniture, and an apartment made up of two units the housing authority combined to accommodate them.
The tour brings these stories to life not just through audio commentary from Chicago actor Lil Rel Howery, but through the museum's use of interactive headsets that allow visitors to hear directly from family members as they move through the spaces, creating what Nash calls “seven performances a day.”
transforming what might be abstract policy discussions into deeply personal testimony. Robinson moved confidently between artifacts, occasionally pausing to add her own insights.
shared. She brings valuable experience from her previous position at the Smart Museum, drawing on her background in theater, programming, and education to structure the NPHM's ambassador program. These staffers go through a paid three-week training to lead tours and other outreach efforts. She calls the team “educators” rather than “docents” because “I want them to own that in this work...I’m educating you about my lived experiences. I’m also educating you about public housing.”
Inside an Archive of Resistance
The NPHM stands out among cultural institutions for two uniquely intimate exhibits that place lived experiences at the center, connecting visitors to real families who once called these units home.
In a recreation of the Turovitz apartment from 1938, visitors encounter authentic artifacts like a treasured gefilte fish chopping bowl—a simple kitchen tool that carried deep cultural significance for this Jewish immigrant family who escaped antisemitism only to find themselves speaking Yiddish in a new country, unable to read or write in English.
Moving through time to the 1960s Hatch family apartment, visitors witness
Nash manages a team of seven ambassadors, noting that this program helps them feel they “belong in this space,” since “museums typically can be very clinical and not approachable, but by them having a piece and a stake in what is being said and how the tours are ran, it is more of a belonging.”
One ambassador, Donya Robinson, embodies this philosophy as she guides visitors through the historic apartments, sharing stories of families who once called these units home. Her presence represents the museum’s commitment to prioritizing employing those with direct lived experience of public housing,
“I’m a current public housing resident. I live right now in the Dearborn Homes, right here in Chicago, Illinois. But to my ignorance, I just thought public housing was for poor Blacks or African Americans,” Robinson explained. “I joined a job program in my area and I saw it at the museum. I got in the training program, and luckily, as you can see, I landed the position. But I learned so much, and I’m glad that I’m able to share what I've learned with you all here today. What I learned too is that African Americans actually had to fight their way into public housing, right?”
She explained to a group of five visitors that veterans returning from war frequently encountered obstacles securing affordable housing despite their military service. She was equally surprised to learn about the housing barriers faced by Jewish families. These historical revelations transformed her perspective on public housing's complex history and the diverse groups who struggled for housing access.
Guided by former and current public housing residents, visitors transition from passive observers to honorary residents,
NPHM ambassador Donya Robinson shows a visitor around an exhibit.
Photo by NaBeela Washington
Dorian Nash, who oversees the museum’s workforce development program. Photo by NaBeela Washington
embodying what Nash describes as “radical hospitality practice”, which goes beyond basic customer service to make people “feel more welcome, to make them feel at home.”
An Old Deal Erased
The New Deal’s vision for public housing emerged as a direct response to the crushing poverty and housing instability of the Great Depression. Through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the federal government made an unprecedented commitment to ensuring that Americans had access to safe, affordable housing as a matter of national policy.
Robinson explains to visitors that residents who moved into early public housing units like those in the Addams Homes, constructed in 1938, often came from overcrowded, unsanitary tenement housing where entire families might be confined to a single room with shared kitchens and bathrooms—if indoor plumbing existed at all. Moving into a two-bedroom apartment with private facilities represented a dramatic improvement in quality of life. For immigrant families like the Turovitz, whose oral histories are preserved at the museum, and for African American families who later fought for the right to access these communities, public housing represented both material security and a symbolic inclusion in America's social contract.
At the turn of the 20th century, faced with public housing units in dire need of renovation and updating, the CHA enacted its “Plan of Transformation”, promising to demolish 18,000 public housing units and replace them with 25,000 rehabbed or newly constructed units over a decade. The demolitions came swiftly, including all but one of the Jane Addams Homes buildings, but rebuilding lagged severely behind. As a 2022 ProPublica investigation revealed, the CHA's claims of success masked a profound failure of accountability. The agency deceptively counted Section 8 vouchers toward its 25,000-unit goal, and after two decades, thousands of promised replacement units were never built. This
effectively scattered predominantly Black public housing residents from valuable central Chicago real estate to often segregated neighborhoods with fewer resources, while developers capitalized on the cleared land for luxury developments.
Today, the public housing social contract continues to face significant challenges. The Trump administration eliminated funding streams for fair housing advocacy organizations and has “stalled at least $60 million in funding largely intended for affordable housing developments nationwide”, according to the Associated Press. At stake is funding for small community development nonprofits that use these grants as seed money for affordable housing projects. The administration has justified these cuts by claiming the organizations were “not in compliance” with Trump's executive order targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
These actions don't simply represent budgetary adjustments but signal a fundamental shift away from the principle established in the New Deal era: that stable housing is essential infrastructure for both individual dignity and national prosperity.
Nash sees the work of the museum taking on particular urgency in the face of these threats. She is resolute about the
focused on cultivating diverse revenue streams, particularly from individual donors and foundations who share their commitment to preserving public housing history. By securing multi-year pledges before the current administration took office, the museum created a buffer against immediate funding threats.
NPHM declined to comment on the museum’s strategy with respect to the Trump administration.
Nash hopes visitors will become advocates who understand that housing insecurity could affect anyone. “What’s most important is that we maintain our values... because housing is the basis to everything. If you don't have secure housing, that affects your employment, then it affects your overall health...if we don’t have that basic human right in terms of housing, it impacts everything,” Nash said.
museum’s approach in these times. “We will not change who we are...we don't have to shout from the rooftops,” she said. “There’s wisdom in ‘be gentle as a lamb, wise like a fox.’ So there's a certain level of just being mindful of the climate that we’re in... It just makes us be more creative.”
Nash’s outlook appears to extend to the institution’s financial planning. While many cultural institutions have seen their federal grants slashed, the NPHM has
She believes that when people recognize this universal vulnerability, they’re more likely to speak out to support fairer housing practices, something the museum actively encourages in its mission. As she likes to remind visitors, “The public, the residents themselves, took a stand and said, ‘You’re not going to erase this history’.” ¬
Ebony and Jet magazine covers on a table in the Hatch apartment. Photo by NaBeela Washington
A recreation of the Turovitz apartment from the 1930s. Photo by NaBeela Washington
The latest results and other news from the Chicago sports world.
BY MALACHI HAYES
Welcome to the South Side Sports Roundup!
Check back every month for the latest news and updates on everything South Side sports fans need to know.
White
Sox Off To Rocky Start
After setting a modern record with 121 losses in 2024, the new White Sox season hasn’t been much brighter. Nearly a month into the new campaign, their 14-30 record once again ranks dead last in the American League—despite General Manager Chris Getz’s preseason assertion to Jon Greenberg of The Athletic that “We are making strides. We are determined to get this right and we will get this right…I can confidently say we’re going to win more games than we did last year.” Their .292 winning percentage so far has them on pace for 115 losses.
Their struggles were highlighted for the entire city to see last weekend as they suffered a disappointing three-game sweep to the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Defensive miscues plagued the Sox for the entire series, with a substantial number of the Cubs’ twenty-six runs over the three games coming as a result of errors and poor decisions in the field. The White Sox still lead the all-time series 78-77, including the 1906 World Series, the only postseason matchup between the two teams. The second leg of the Crosstown Classic will be played at Rate Field on the South Side between July 25-27.
Nonetheless, May has brought some signs of life, winning four of five games earlier in the month. Unheralded offseason acquisition Shane Smith has been a revelation in the rotation, flashing a 97 MPH fastball and working to a 2.05 ERA, good for ninth in the league. A well-publicized swing change has led to a big improvement for infielder Miguel Vargas, who’s hitting .333 since April 23 and was named AL Player of the Week for May 12-18.
Still, other regulars have been historically bad, and the bullpen continues to struggle, having converted just three of
ten save opportunities to this point. Their current homestand runs through Sunday, May 25, and they’ll next play at home June 2-8.
Pope Confirmed Sox Fan
All of Chicagoland buzzed this month at the election of South Side-born Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV, leading the Cubs to display a message erroneously claiming the new Pope as a fan of the North Siders. Shortly thereafter, local media reported that Prevost was, in fact, a White Sox fan. A photo soon emerged of the Pontiff in attendance at the 2005 World Series, allowing more than 40,000 Sox fans to now claim that they saw a baseball game with the Pope. The White Sox recently unveiled a mural of the Pope in that section of the stadium.
Bears Reinforce Roster In Highly Anticipated Draft
The NFL draft took place last month in Green Bay, Wisconsin, giving Bears fans a glimpse at the team’s direction under new coach Ben Johnson. Johnson, thirtynine, arrived in Chicago in February after signing a record $65 million contract.
Drafting in the #10 spot, Johnson and GM Ryan Poles used their first pick on Colston Loveland, a tight end from the University of Michigan. Loveland’s fifty-six catches for the Wolverines in 2024 were a school record for the position. Analysts praised Loveland’s pass-catching ability, saying it makes him an excellent fit for Johnson’s offense as a complement to incumbent end Cole Kmet.
“This kid is physical, he’s tough, he plays the game the right way. When you watch the tape, there’s an energy level that comes with him,” Poles said of Loveland. “I know he’s going to add a ton of value to our offense, and entire team."
The Bears further solidified their roster in the second round, selecting Missouri receiver Luther Burden III, Boston College
lineman Ozzy Trapilo, and Texas A&M defensive tackle Shemar Turner. They kicked off their first round of offseason workouts this past Monday, and they’ll open their season on Monday Night Football against the Vikings on September 8.
Sky Add Picks, Prepare For Season Opener
Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky opened their season on Friday, suffering a 9358 blowout loss to Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever. It was a disappointing start after a promising offseason that saw the organization reset after a brutal 1327 season in 2024 that cost coach Teresa Weatherspoon her job after just one year. Expectations are considerably higher in 2025 after roster upgrades that included a trade for Washington star Ariel Atkins and the return of Sky legend Courtney Vandersloot, who starred in Chicago from 2011 to 2022 and ranks second on the WNBA’s all-time assist leaderboard.
They also added two promising players in last month’s draft, which was headlined by the Dallas Wings’ selection of UConn superstar Paige Bueckers with the first pick. With the ninth pick, the Sky landed twenty-one-year-old Slovenian forward Ajša Sivka, who played the 2024 season in France and was projected by some to be taken several picks earlier. Minutes later, the team added point guard Hailey Van Lith, who recently became the first player ever to lead three different colleges to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight. Beyond her accomplishments on the court, Van Lith is one of the most popular players in the sport, boasting over 1.3 million Instagram followers.
Despite the rough start, fan Dante Jones isn’t particularly worried.”Coming into the season, I figured it wouldn’t be the easiest thing ever. [They’re] a young team with no true superstar,” he told the Weekly. “It’s just game one, so no need to worry, in my opinion.”
The Sky open their season at Wintrust
Arena on May 22 against the defending champion New York Liberty.
South Side Native Selected 7th Overall
Though it didn’t benefit the Sky, South Side basketball fans were thrilled to hear LSU stalwart Aneesah Morrow’s name called with the Connecticut Sun’s pick at #7. Morrow led Simeon High School’s girls team to their first state championship and had her jersey retired by the school’s storied basketball program. She initially played at DePaul University, where was named National Freshman of the Year for DePaul in 2022, before transferring to powerhouse LSU.
Morrow finished her college career as the third-leading rebounder in NCAA history and the second collegiate player to record over 100 career double-doubles. “Growing up on the South Side of Chicago was hard,” she told ESPN’s Holly Rowe upon her selection. Now, she’s “trying to set that example for those behind me who look up and want to be able to accomplish what I have.”
Dyett Takes Home State Championship
Just a decade after being narrowly rescued from closure, Walter Dyett High School for the Arts in the Washington Park neighborhood made a huge new addition to its trophy case in late March when its boys basketball team took home the Division 2A State Championship, the first athletics championship for the reopened school. Though it has an academic focus on the arts, Dyett’s growing athletics success is helping make it one of the city’s most wellrounded schools, as Block Club reported on in-depth. More CPS City and State championships are taking place over the course of May. ¬
Malachi Hayes is a Bridgeport-based writer and South Side native.
Illustration by Shane Tolentino
Public Meetings Report
illustration by Holley Appold/South Side Weekly
A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level.
BY SCOTT PEMBERTON AND DOCUMENTERS
April 9
Using ShotSpotter gunfire detection tools, Chicago first tried sound to reduce gun violence. Now the CTA will try sight. The ZeroEyes gun-detection program will receive $1.2 million to expand its operations with fifteen hundred new cameras after the Chicago Transit Authority Board approved the measure at a regular meeting. Launched in the summer of 2024 as a pilot, the $200,000 program has reportedly detected ten guns and led to six arrests to date. Its failure to alert police to a quadruple murder on the Blue Line in September has raised questions about the program’s effectiveness. Another pilot— this one testing a one-day regional fare program—will offer unlimited twenty-four-hour CTA, Metra, and Pace service for $9.50 on weekends and $10 on weekdays. CTA’s acting president Nora Leershen reported on her ongoing work with the state government to head off a $770 million shortfall in the 2026 Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) budget. The RTA oversees CTA, Metra, and Pace services, and the shortfall’s impact would be widespread. The Board also learned about system improvements that are under way. The $25 million Austin Green Line reconstruction is part of the CTA’s All Stations Accessibility Program. The Frequent Network is designed to provide buses that arrive every ten minutes or sooner on twenty routes.
April 30
A “snap curfew” for young people was a topic at a meeting of the Chicago City Council Committee on Public Safety. (It’s also the theme for this print issue–check out our collection of stories starting on page 7.) A proposed ordinance would allow the police superintendent and deputy mayor for public safety to declare a youth curfew in the city with thirty minutes notice. The proposed amendment is a response to what has come to be known as “teen takeovers.” Also described as “mass gatherings,” groups of young people gather downtown with some participants’ behavior at times escalating into fights, vandalism, and violent crime. Community organizations, advocacy and youth groups, and some alderpersons, however, have raised significant legal and social concerns about the amendment and its enforcement. Council members questioned its logistics and scope, particularly in connection with non-specific language describing when and how police may impose a curfew. Council members also noted that existing powers of the police department have enabled officers to disperse large gatherings and prevent them from becoming violent without an ordinance. “I do think that this needs more time,” said Council Member Matt Martin (47th Ward). “[Attorneys] consistently told us that the proposed policy, despite being very well intended, is legally flawed.”
Two crime-prevention-related programs were reviewed at a 9th Police District Council— Deering meeting: the Community Mediation Program and the Felony Review Bypass Program. A third proposed program being considered by the state legislature would, under some circumstances, allow some first-time nonviolent offenders facing gun possession charges to apply for a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card after completing the First Time Weapon Offense Program. The ninth district includes Back of the Yards, Gage Park, Near South Side, Little Village, Bridgeport, McKinley Park, Fuller Park, West
Englewood, Englewood, Brighton Park, Douglas, Armour Square, and Pilsen. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) is piloting a mediation program to facilitate conversations and resolve conflicts between police officers and community members in connection with some police misconduct complaints. The program was launched in 2022, and COPA officials hosted community conversations in March and April to gather input and feedback, reported Daisha Muhammad, COPA’s director of mediation. Ethan Holland, who heads up criminal prosecutions for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, discussed the expansion of the Felony Review Bypass Program, which allows police to file felony charges for certain nonviolent gun possession cases without requiring State’s Attorney’s Office approval. The program “is an effort to address a longstanding bottleneck in Cook County’s criminal justice system,” explained a press release from State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke.
April 30
The Community Commission for Police Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) continued its COPA Chief Administrator Search with another remote listening session to gather community input to inform the Commission in the selection of a new leader for the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA). The former head of the oversight body, Andrea Kersten, resigned in February amid controversy in connection with allegations of mismanagement and anti-police bias. In response to one speaker’s comment, Anthony Driver, president of the CCPSA, denied that Kersten’s resignation was connected to clashes with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) or CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling. At the listening session, attendees said they want to see more community engagement from the new chief administrator as well as cultural competency. The new hire must be confirmed by the City Council.
May 5
At its meeting, the City Council Committee on Environmental Protection and Energy members conducted a subject matter hearing on the Peoples Gas System Modernization Program (SMP). Committee members’ concerns included delays in permitting, cost accountability, long-term plans, and improved interagency coordination. The committee proposed holding regular hearings with Peoples Gas, similar to summer preparedness hearings conducted with ComEd. The goal of those hearings is to ensure ComEd’s reliability throughout the summer. The Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) has allowed the Peoples Gas Pipe Replacement Project to resume after a pause in 2023 to investigate rising costs and timelines. With this decision, the ICC has directed Peoples Gas to meet a 2035 deadline to replace 1,100 miles of aging pipe, comply with emissions reporting requirements in connection with the Chicago Climate Action Plan, and to prioritize safety. Labor unions and Peoples Gas emphasized creating jobs and the initiative’s urgency, citing safety risks and the pipe retirement deadline.
May 7
The Chicago City Council Joint Committee: Finance; Housing and Real Estate passed an amendment to the Municipal Code at its meeting by adding a section known as the “Green Social Housing” ordinance. The ordinance [later approved by the City Council] authorizes creation of a “not-for-profit residential investment corporation” to provide permanently affordable mixed-income housing in Chicago. The nonprofit would oversee a $135 million loan fund to develop the housing. City leaders say they expect to produce 1,200 affordable apartments annually through the initiative. “I don’t know how much Green Social Housing will be used in my community,” said Council Member Maria Hadden (49th Ward). “But I know that the displacement that we are experiencing, my neighbors—the seventy-five percent renters who make up the 49th Ward who are being priced out of our community—will benefit from more housing being created around the city as a whole.” City officials also cited the uncertain federal funding landscape as an added reason for the ordinance. “I’m confident that Green Social Housing in Chicago will become a model for the nation,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “This work is part of our Housing and Economic Development Bond, the largest investment in affordable housing and economic development in the history of Chicago.”
This information was collected and curated by the Weekly in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org.
Our thoughts in exchange for yours.
The Exchange is the Weekly’s poetry corner, where a poem or piece of writing is presented with a prompt. Readers are welcome to respond to the prompt with original poems, and pieces may be featured in the next issue of the Weekly.
sTREEtS
by chima “naira” ikoro
the way we refer to young people changes depending on where you’re at. like streets—
in some places they have names and in other places they’re just numbers.
Lake, 71st, both running parallel, the difference is a tax bracket, a shade of skin a tone of voice.
imagine clear cutting a forest leveling every home and habitat and leaving all that used to scurry through the branches with no place to burrow in.
they file into the City, take up shelter in the crevices of Gold Coast, nestle into the spaces between buildings on Michigan Ave, rebuild their community under Cloud Gate.
would you call that an infestation? or is that reparations? in the summertime, every block is too hot to stand on.
don’t you know that Black attracts heat?
the kids run from east to west, from south to north like streets.
one minute they were numbers and the next they are names.
which plot in the ground should i slide to if i wanna be safe? which landmark is symbolic of home base? or are we supposed to keep running?
bullets aren’t seed yet they hit glass and sprout branches, they tell us we must miss our trees, as if they were stomped out and not cut down. as if a kid could carry a chainsaw,
or hold the responsibility of squandering resources they never got the chance to see, let alone waste.
did you forget that they are small things, looking for a place to hug, and laugh, and argue— fake reports of gunshots send cops racing to go toe to toe with whoever’s brown enough to be guilty.
defying speed limits and due process a badge adorns them judge, jury, and executioner on sight where’s their curfew?
white boys in Lincoln park getting drunk and crashing Divvy bikes, fighting outside the bars, where’s their curfew?
the suburban kids that flood in from the outskirts like roaches, like rats,
leave garbage on every inch of the South Loop on Lollapalooza weekend,
trash Douglass Park for Summer Smash, North Coast fest, jam packing the emergency rooms on bad drug trips, curfew, perhaps?
the difference is a tax bracket, a shade of skin a tone of voice.
Lake and 71st.
a number, a name, running parallel, running side by side, holding hands to feel safe. never called them kids, how can anyone even call them home when you leveled all their trees?
claim you never called them outside, either. so call them streets, tell them to keep running.
Chima Ikoro is the Weekly’s Community Builder.
THIS WEEK'S PROMPT: “WHAT DOES YOUR SAFE HAVEN LOOK LIKE?”
This could be a poem, journal entry, or a stream-of-consciousness piece. Submissions could be new or formerly written pieces. Submissions can be sent to bit.ly/ssw-exchange or via email to chima.ikoro@southsideweekly.com
