SSW 10.14.21

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SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, artists, photographers, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.

Volume 9, Issue 3 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Interim Managing Editor Jim Daley Senior Editors Christian Belanger Christopher Good Rachel Kim Emeline Posner Adam Przybyl Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Arts Editor Politics Editor Education Editor Housing Editor Community Organizing Editor Immigration Editor

Isabel Nieves Jim Daley Madeleine Parrish Malik Jackson Chima Ikoro Alma Campos

Contributing Editors Lucia Geng Matt Moore

Francisco Ramírez Pinedo Jocelyn Vega Scott Pemberton Staff Writers Kiran Misra Yiwen Lu Data Editor

Jasmine Mithani

Director of Fact Checking: Kate Gallagher Fact Checkers: Susan Chun, Hannah Faris, Maria Maynez, Ebony Ellis, Grace Del Vecchio, Savannah Huguely, and Peter Winslow Visuals Editor Haley Tweedell Deputy Visuals Editors Shane Tolentino Mell Montezuma Anna Mason Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma Shane Tolentino Layout Editors Haley Tweedell Davon Clark Tony Zralka Webmaster Pat Sier Managing Director Jason Schumer Director of Operations Brigid Maniates The Weekly is produced by a mostly all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week.

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

Cover Photo by Esther Ikoro

IN CHICAGO Thank you, Martha!

Martha Bayne joined the Weekly as its managing editor at the beginning of 2020— just in time to take on one of the most challenging years of news coverage we have ever experienced. Having previously worked at the Reader and the Tribune, Martha brought deep editing experience to the Weekly. Her guidance has been invaluable to our ability to cover COVID-19, the 2020 rebellions, and many other difficult topics.

She managed our newsroom with patience, acumen, and empathy, and in doing so she taught us how to be better journalists. Now, Martha is moving on to a welldeserved position as a senior acquisitions editor at the University of Illinois Press.

Congratulations, Martha, we’ll miss you.

COVID in CPS update At least one parent at Jensen Elementary in Lawndale has died from COVID-19, which her family said she contracted after her fifth-grader was sent home because of exposure to the virus. According to CPS data, between August 29 and October 10 there were 1,366 reported COVID-19 cases among students and 368 among adults across the district. CPS and the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) now require “close contacts” to quarantine for ten days unless they are fully vaccinated and asymptomatic.

CDPH Commissioner Allison Arwady announced the change from what had been a fourteen-day quarantine at a press conference on October 5, citing a low case rate in CPS and noting that no children have died from COVID-19 in Chicago since school started. As of October 10, there were 5,438 students and 261 adults in quarantine or isolation. She also noted that 0.48 percent of staff and students have had a positive COVID-19 test and were present in a CPS facility when they could have been infectious.

The Chicago Teachers Union passed a resolution last week calling for actions to pressure Mayor Lightfoot to concede to a safety agreement that would mandate weekly testing for staff and students whose parents don’t opt out. CPS’s deadline for all employees to be fully vaccinated is October 15; according to CPS data, 78.2 percent of CPS employees were fully vaccinated as of October 4.

The Art Institute organizes Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) and School of Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) employees have been protesting to create a union due to what they call unfair working conditions. Since the start of the pandemic, around 200 employees of AIC and SAIC have been either furloughed or laid off entirely. The remaining employees say they have had to take on additional tasks to make up for job cuts, in-person and without hazard pay. In September, employees were joined by students, museum goers, and other community members to protest for workers rights. Employees are still organizing but say they face pushback from AIC and SAIC leadership.

Evictions, your rights, and aid The Illinois eviction moratorium expired on October 3, leaving an estimated 30,000 renters in the City of Chicago vulnerable to eviction. Housing organizations and the City are imploring tenants not to self-evict. If you are issued an eviction notice by your landlord, there is still due process in court, and only the Sheriff ’s Office can legally carry out an eviction. In the meantime, there are resources available, including legal aid and cash assistance for tenants.

Chicago-specific rental assistance: rentrelief.com/allchicago/ Cook County rental assistance: cookcountyil.gov/rent-help Illinois rental assistance: bit.ly/ILRentAssist Rentervention, a legal-aid bot that can answer questions, draft letters, and explain your rights: rentervention.com

IN THIS ISSUE public meetings report

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level. documenters, scott pemberton, india daniels, rocio villaseñor.4 op-ed: a library for the gage park community

After years of disinvestment, the neighborhood needs a library it can use. maritere gomez............................5 south shore novelist mixes humor and tragedy

A review of Gabriel Bump’s 2020 novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong sage behr.......................................6 roses through the concrete

Two self-taught artists inspired by their Roseland community discuss their work. chima ikoro...................................8 nowhere

How and where do immigrants find belonging? gustavo rueda.............................12 op-ed: america owes haitian migrants asylum

The U.S. has created the very conditions that Haitians are fleeing from. frederique desrosiers...............14 i was a stranger and you welcomed me

“The border is here in Chicago at this Greyhound station.” dhivya sridar..............................18 family business

Ald. Cardenas’ brother profited by renting CPS parking during Riot Fest. kelly garcia.................................19 negocio entre familia

Hermano de concejal ganó miles rentando el estacionamiento de CPS para Riot Fest. kelly garcia.................................20 calendar

Bulletin and events. south side weekly staff............21

Public Meetings Report ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLEY APPOLD

Sep 14 The City Council approved a new contract for Chicago police that includes retroactive pay and an immediate 10.5 percent pay raise to cover the four years the police worked without a contract. Mayor Lori Lightfoot recognized Hispanic Heritage Month and essential workers at the meeting. The council passed a resolution honoring Jesus ‘Chuy’ Negrete, a Chicano “corrido” singer who recently passed away. Sarah Brune, Neighborhood Housing Services director, advocated for the Lending Equity ordinance, which passed. Brune said the rate of Black homeownership is thirty percent lower than the rate of white homeownership, and noted that hasn’t changed since the 1960s. The Committee on Health and Human Relations endorsed the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act currently in the U.S. Senate.

Sep 16 A residential and business development proposal was approved for the West Loop at the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) Plan Commission meeting. The proposed twenty-nine-story development would have 282 residential units and eighty-nine parking spaces. It would be located at 160 N. Morgan St., near the Morgan Green Line station. The developer, Sterling Bay, would provide only twenty-eight affordable units, and pay $5.3 million in affordable housing fees and $2 million into the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund. This development proposal is the first in which the new affordable requirements ordinance (ARO) is “playing out,” said Department of Housing Commissioner Marisa Novara. The proposal moved to the Committee on Zoning.

Sep 21 The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) has downsized its footprint in its headquarters building, now occupies only floors seven through twelve, and intends to sublease the other floors, said Chief Operating Officer James Bebley at the CHA Board of Commissioners meeting. Other 2022 projections include the delivery of 282 new housing units, the conversion of 1,100 public housing units to Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) project-based vouchers, and $120.4 million toward planned capital expenditures. Due to the pandemic, there was only one in-person public comment event, but three virtual events. Commissioner Francine Washington noted that there is very little to any resident representation on the boards of associations for CHA’s mixed-income developments: “We can’t have folks make decisions for us without us. We are getting the short end of the stick…cut us in or cut us out.”

Commissioner Chris Brown said at the Chicago Public Library Board meeting that fifty-five percent of library branches now offer Sunday hours, with the goal to have all branches open on Sundays by the end of the year. Over the summer, CPL staff was given a virtual tour of the library branch and the entire Obama Presidential Center (OPC), according to Commissioner Chris Brown. The next step is to work with OPC staff to plan an operational programming menu to inform the design of the library branch. Public commenters commended the staff and technological facilities at the Harold Washington Branch, which just had its 30th anniversary, for its ease of access for the visually impaired.

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 14, 2021

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level for the October 14 issue.

BY DOCUMENTERS, SCOTT PEMBERTON, INDIA DANIELS, AND ROCIO VILLASEÑOR

Sep 22 Only two members out of nine were present during the Commission on Chicago Landmarks Program Committee meeting. Nonetheless, all three nominees for designation on the National Register of Historic Places were moved forward to the full committee by members Suellen Burns and the Rev. Richard Tolliver. The nominees were the Altgeld Gardens-Phillip Murray Homes Historic District, the Ramova Theater, and The Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s house. Twenty new public nominations were introduced and included churches, banks, parks, school buildings, gardens, and homes as well as the former residence of Donda and Kanye West. If the James R. Thompson Center nomination is approved, it would be the first postmodern building in Illinois to be listed in the National Register.

Sep 23 At its monthly meeting, the Chicago Police Board unanimously voted to suspend Detective Jason Villareal for 180 days on charges of misconduct that were filed by First Deputy Superintendent Eric Carter. Superintendent David Brown recommended Villareal be discharged, but revoked that recommendation after the parties agreed to settle. Carter also reported on homicide clearances, which are at forty-five percent for the year to date. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) arrested 1,007 people on carjacking-related offenses this year. Carter explained that the vehicular hijacking task force has doubled in size to eighty officers and reported that 9,093 firearms were recovered.

Oct 1 The City’s 911 call center is experiencing high employee turnover and is seeking to fill eighty-two vacancies, Richard Guidice, executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, reported at the City Council Committee on Budget and Operations Hearings. Guidice added that the co-responder pilot program began on September 30 in a North Side police district and, when operational, will send a crisis intervention team (CIT) to respond in some situations. CITs are to include a mental health professional, an emergency medical technician, and CIT-trained police officers. No CITs had responded to calls at the time of the hearing. The Department of Water Management is planning an 8.3-mile tunnel to reduce flooding and sewer issues on the Southwest Side, according to Andrea Cheng, the department’s commissioner.

Oct 4 The average person will no longer be able to tune in to police scanners. The Chicago Police Department expects to begin encrypting its radio feeds to prevent interruptions by the end of the year, Superintendent Brown told council members at the City Council Committee on Budget and Operations Hearings. During the ten-hour hearing on the proposed $1.89 billion CPD budget, council members questioned Brown on topics ranging from carjackings and illegal firearm possession to recruitment of new officers and potential use of drones. About 150 written comments, many challenging the ShotSpotter contract, were submitted by members of the public. The president of the Chicago Police Board, Ghian Foreman, said that the board is “more than willing” to pass some of its responsibilities on to the newly created Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, which is scheduled to be set up in 2022.

This information was collected in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org.

OPINION

Op-Ed: A Library for the Gage Park Community After years of disinvestment, the neighborhood needs a library it can use.

BY MARITERE GOMEZ Gage Park population: 39,540 Gage Park Public Library capacity: 25

T

he Gage Park Public Library was the place where I first found a copy of Assata Shakur’s Assata: An Autobiography in elementary school. I devoured that book. Everything in that book told me that there was more that I needed to learn, that there was more than what I saw before me at the time. It was a door leading to the Chicago struggle for justice.

The Gage Park library has not changed since I was sitting in it two decades ago.

It was recently deemed too small to open during the pandemic because it doesn’t allow for social distancing: its floor is the size of two medium-sized rooms, around 550 square feet in total. The library was closed for a year and five months, only reopening on August 2, while other neighborhood libraries had been open for months.

Now, more than ever, the Gage Park community is demanding a library they can use. Students in the area have lost family members to COVID-19. They had to adapt to learning through a computer screen while the adults in their homes were putting in overtime as essential workers during the pandemic. They need access to this key resource, and it is the least that this city could do for one of its most undervalued neighborhoods.

Fortunately, due to the efforts of the Gage Park Latinx Council (GPLX) and other organizations in the area, this need

was brought to light in the context of the pandemic. The library might even provide newer computers and extended hours by the end of the year.

But that’s not enough. And with the leadership of the GPLX, the community is demanding a new library that is well-resourced and large enough for a neighborhood with a population of more than 39,540 as of 2020.

“A new state-of-the-art public library would show the residents of our community that the city of Chicago and CPL [Chicago Public Library] are committed to investing in our collective futures,” Antonio Santos, executive director of the grassroots organization, said in response to questions over email. “Creating public space for access to information in a resource desert can be a revolutionary act for Gage Park with limitless benefits and potential.”

When I was a child in the late nineties and early 2000s, the library was open seven days a week for the entire day. Inside the library, the six computers were outdated and there was usually a long wait to use one of them, but it offered a place of peace for me.

It was dim, which I didn’t mind, but now thinking back, I wonder why a place meant for reading wasn’t brightly lit enough.

The library was already suffering from disinvestment when in 2012 Rahm Emanuel shut down what little access we had to books in that library and sparked outrage in the Gage Park community. His budget cuts included cutting fifty public schools in Black and brown communities

and cutting $10 million from the public library budget. All the while, his own children had access to high schools that charged fees as expensive as college tuition and housed state-of-the-art libraries, photography studios, and gymnasiums.

I am not advocating for the removal of these facilities from anyone. I’m merely pointing out the discrepancy between children and communities of privilege and those who are not children of politicians. I want children across my neighborhood in Gage Park to have access to these places even if we are not the children of politicians or the wealthy.

We are worthy of knowing this well-resourced world, where the life of the mind is also an option.

As Santos stated, “The Chicago Public Library claims that there isn’t room in their 100-plus million dollar budget for investment for our community. The task of raising funds for this public project has instead been placed upon the very people who are calling for investment. This means that community members are tasked with the responsibility of raising awareness and funds for a public service that more affluent communities get handed to them.”

Most recently in pushing for a new library, the Gage Park Latinx Council started a petition that has garnered more than 2,600 signatures as of October 11.

The neighborhood is in dire need of some

good things to happen within its parameters, but that won’t happen unless some resources are first allocated.

So how do we get the library to materialize? Santos has an idea for how the community can push for the library: Gage Park Latinx Council is calling on everyone to contact Chicago Public Library administrators and sign and share a petition to vocalize your support. You can find the petition for a new public library in Gage Park at bit.ly/gage-parklibrary-petition.

Gage Park Latinx Council suggests contacting the following Chicago Public Library staff about this issue: Chris Brown, Commissioner: commissioner@chipublib.org Mary Ellen Messner, First Deputy Commissioner: mmessner@chipublib.org Maggie Clemons, Deputy Commissioner, Library Operations and Patron Experience: mclemons@chipublib.org Maritere Gomez grew up in Gage Park. She has been an activist in the city for over ten years, mostly fighting for immigrant and labor justice for her community that gives so much and is not thanked enough. She is a first-year law student. Maritere last wrote for the Weekly as the Neighborhood Captain for Gage Park in Best of the South Side 2020.

PHOTO BY MARITERE GOMEZ

OCTOBER 14, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

LITERATURE

South Shore Novelist Mixes Humor and Tragedy

A review of Gabriel Bump’s 2020 novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong.

BY SAGE BEHR

​​C

laude McKay Love is funny. I just don’t know if he knows it.

When we first meet Claude, the protagonist and narrator of Gabriel Bump’s 2020 debut novel Everywhere You Don’t Belong, he is very young, probably four or five. Initially, Claude’s age seems to account for the warped time and non sequiturs that lend scenes a surreal and hilarious quality.

Claude describes an early memory: his grandma swings him by the ankle to sit him on the curb and he watches his father wrestle a man, described as having a sad face, outside of the house. “On his tongue: something important and tragic, a foreverburied secret.” When the cops arrive, Claude is applauding, and the cops laugh at the “ridiculous black-on-black crime.”

By the time Claude’s parents abandon him in the second chapter, it is clear that this book flicks humor like a knife, shocking

you before you can feel the pain. It is also clear that Claude’s bizarre narration is not just a symptom of his youth. The sharpness of detail Claude provides is staggering in moments, creating a disorienting contrast with the lack of explanation.

“When Mom and Dad had their final fight, we were late to an all-black rendition of Fiddler on the Roof...Dad was out there without a boat, without pants or suit jacket, down to his underwear.”

This moment doesn’t become any clearer in context—in the paragraph that surrounds the sentence, there are no clues to indicate that Claude’s father is even near a body of water. Scene-setting information is doled out with such an unexpected rhythm that it keeps the reader searching for answers to fairly basic questions. What was Dad doing “out there” in the first place? How did he get in the water? Is he high, or having a mental break? Is this

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 14, 2021

PHOTO OF GABRIEL BUMP BY JEREMY HANDRUP

funny? Is it sad? The reader only receives facts in dubious breadcrumbs or direct statements, when Claude unexpectedly calls something what it is, or through the commentary of another adult present.

The moments of lucidity remain a mainstay of Claude’s affect. Even as he grows older and his perception of the world develops, Claude remains an eccentric narrator for whom time and context are constantly shifting substances.

Claude lives with his grandma and her friend Paul in a South Shore home that is as caring as it is unconventional.

Paul and Grandma bicker but still care for each other. They criticize Claude

bluntly but never without compassion.

They display deep self-understanding while living with a sometimes gleeful denial of reality.

Claude is the ultimate observer, communicating his interiority in poetic snippets that intersect with hilariously frank descriptions of the world around him. When Claude loses his virginity in a thirty-second tryst with a first-time houseguest, he portrays an immature, awkward moment as unanticipated, brief, and yet profound. “Dawn, chemistry, physics, melding; rush, fire, an eclipse between us. Holding Janice like that—never again would I feel that close

to someone.”

The moment passes in just a couple paragraphs and leaves the reader wondering if Janice will disappear, like Claude’s parents and childhood friends, or if this moment will become part of the continuous narrative. It’s the beginning of a new part of the book: a love story that winds its way through Claude’s life with varied levels of intensity.

Claude’s unique narration levels the urgency of dire moments, while elevating the status of quotidian details. He paints a multiplex portrait of the tragedy and comedy of his life. In Claude’s world, people float in and out as characters.

South Shore is stagnant, and yet it changes overnight. People never cease to exist when the story moves on from them; it’s always clear that characters have lives off the page. It’s an ingenious way to paint a complicated portrait of South Shore.

In the South Shore of this novel, small occurrences happen in conjunction with big ones. It is precisely this subversion of gravity that makes Everywhere You Don’t Belong so effective in its portrayal of a complex person’s existence in a nuanced neighborhood.

The author knows that humor thrives in contact with tragedy, and he uses that as a tool throughout. He never lets the reader forget that people in South Shore live multitudinous lives.

When South Shore explodes into what the book describes as a war between raging community residents, gang members, and the police, however, something in Claude changes. Now a strange yet lovable teenager, Claude is overwhelmed by the sheer bigness of this culmination of events in his neighborhood, so he leaves to study journalism at the University of Missouri.

The book weathers this environmental shift with some tonal dissonance.

As a reader, I found Claude harder to understand outside of his home. The style of writing doesn’t adjust to Claude’s new environment. The dreamlike narration does not feel grounded enough to show the reader what life really feels like in this new place. It’s a continuation of the style that works so well during the majority of the book—but I found myself wishing that Claude would do some of the work

that his environs in South Shore did to clue me in on his interiority.

The novel’s author, Gabriel Bump, grew up in South Shore and stayed in Chicago through his undergraduate studies at School of the Art Institute Chicago. This intimacy with South Shore is apparent in Bump’s writing. He is able to suspend rules of time and context because he delivers such precise details about the neighborhood. “Thank you South Shore. Love you,” he writes in the acknowledgements.

Even still, Bump’s portrayal of leaving home feels less precise. Perhaps for that reason, the third act of the book brought forth aspects that didn’t feel successful to me. In sudden turns, Claude’s narration shifts to an analytical tone that feels out of step with the removed observational style that he generally floats in. Near the end of the book, the machinations of the plot become uncharacteristically difficult to believe, trading absurdity for neatness in defiance of what the book has taught us about its world. And, maybe like Claude (or Bump), I simply missed South Shore when he left.

My favorite works of art have always been the ones that become both funnier and sadder upon their revisiting.

Everywhere You Don’t Belong fits into that genre and elevates it. It is a cliche to say I laughed out loud, but I will say it for this book, and more: I laughed at moments so sad they took my breath away, and when I returned to my favorite lines, I found that they were all the more tragic for their humor. This book is a wonderful debut from an author with an exquisite talent for marrying humor with trauma, poetry with frankness, and truth with the unreliable angels of memory. Everywhere You Don’t Belong, by Gabriel Bump. 272 pages. Workman Publishing, 2020. $25.95 hardcover.

Sage Behr is an actor, writer, and barista originally from Iowa City. This is her first article for the Weekly.

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OCTOBER 14, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

ARTS

Roses Through the Concrete

sense. I gravitated to that because that's what I identified with.”

“I didn’t know too many people in the neighborhood. That was actually the first place I started taking the bus. I got to see the world for what it was, especially in this neighborhood, because you see everything in the morning on the CTA going to school.

“That really shaped who I stand for in my art now. It’s one of those things where I look back and see these experiences are experiences everybody goes through. This is what’s common between us, whether it's normal or not. Unfortunately, a lot of those normal or common things aren’t things we brag about or things we should have to go through. But I kinda use that as my grounding point to know why I paint, this is who I paint for, and these are the experiences I’m drawing from.”

Kalief talked about how he honed in on the dreams of “making it out” and chasing after your dreams. In his work, he takes his memories of the world around him in his neighborhood and points them toward a brighter side that looks toward the future.

“In order to acknowledge the bright side, you have to acknowledge what was there and what was happening. You see the power in the bright side in knowing these are the things that people went through,” he said.

Two self-taught artists from Roseland share their journey, having started with few resources.

BY CHIMA IKORO

O

ftentimes when we see Roseland in the news, it’s followed by tragedy. As a predominantly Black neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Roseland has been stereotyped, forgotten, and pushed to the side. We always see this happening with neighborhoods that experience frequent violence; it's the only thing some people find worthy of discussing about these places.

I grew up in Beverly Woods, not too far from Roseland, in The Hundreds. I saw Roseland as a reflection of myself as a teenager—misunderstood and lacking what it needed to grow. How can we so harshly judge a neighborhood with no outlets or resources? What do we think will happen when a neighborhood has few community spaces and no spots for their youth to express themselves creatively?

Still, Roseland births talented and bright individuals that bloom regardless of how onlookers doubt this place. They stand as proof that roses can grow wherever they are planted, and that's why Roseland holds gardens within the cracks of its concrete.

I spoke to two young Black visual artists from Roseland, Kalief Dinkins and Eugene Micah Muhammad, who are both self-taught and are creating a lane for themselves with their work.

K

alief Dinkins is a recent graduate of The University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign and a full-time artist from the far South Side. Originally attending school in Englewood, Kalief moved in his early teenage years. “For high school I moved to Roseland,” Kalief said, “and that’s actually where I started painting.”

Kalief didn’t consider himself an artist growing up, although he would draw here and there. He focused more on sports until his junior year of high school when he started painting on his clothes and shoes.

“I always used to draw as a kid,” he said. “I used to draw The Boondocks. Considering the content of The Boondocks, I think speaks to being from the South Side because that resonated with me, as opposed to growing up painting flowers or things of that 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 14, 2021

PHOTO BY ESTHER IKORO.

“I didn’t go to school for art, it was something I found as a hustle,” Kalief said. “It was introduced as something I painted on my clothes because I couldn’t afford these clothes or because I couldn’t find them so I made them myself.”

“I didn’t know any artists growing up, nobody around me painted. I didn’t really notice until I got to college when people from high school said ‘You inspired me to do this.’ That was kind of where I noticed I represent these people whether I choose to or don't.”

“I do take a lot more pride in being from the South Side considering the obstacles we face on the daily just being from that area.”

He thought back to when he first started creating and the unorthodox path that led him to become a painter. He said, “My sophomore year of high school I stopped playing basketball and I started a clothing line based off my drawings and I would sell these clothes out my locker during the day—which I was not supposed to. But I was selling hoodies, and sweaters and t-shirts out of my locker during passing period.”

Kalief cites that as his first experience with selling his art, but he didn’t look at it as an artistic endeavor. However, when Kalief was a junior, he started painting shoes. This is where he first started considering himself an artist because he was being acknowledged by his peers as such. At this point, he’d never painted a single canvas—he was painting on Timberland boots and Air Force 1’s. He drew inspiration from a World

ARTS

KALIEF DINKINS, 23, AND ORIGINAL PAINTINGS. PHOTO BY ESTHER IKORO.

“I didn’t know any artists growing up, nobody around me painted.” –Kalief Dinkins Star Hip-Hop video where he saw a pair of custom Timberland’s, but after realizing he could not afford them, he decided to make his own.

Eventually, he agreed to paint shoes for his friends, but still struggled with pricing them because he had no knowledge about how much his work was worth. He actually started doing them for free, and then went up to fifty-dollars. “[It’s] insane to think about now, considering the materials I was using, the paint, the time…” he said.

As Kalief spoke about how difficult being self-taught was initially, he began to recall seemingly obvious questions that he did not have answers to until he learned through trying.

“The smallest things as far as: what canvas to paint on? What does this acrylic paint go on? How long does it take to dry? Oh, I gotta keep washing my paintbrush?

Little stuff like that, that you would think is very simple.

“I had never been introduced to any of this,” Kalief said, “I didn’t even know... where to get a canvas from.”

Kalief said that at times he wouldn’t even refer to himself as an artist because of this constant state of learning. “Inside, I wasn’t there yet, I didn’t know how to do this every time I picked up a paintbrush. I was always like ‘Imma see how this turns out.’”

“I think at the same time, because it is self taught, it has a lot of personality,” he said. “I’m kind of doing what I think I should be doing, which is probably wrong, but if we’re talking about art, there is no right or wrong way to do it.”

Kalief said when he lived in Roseland, he started understanding the reasons why the neighborhood was the way it was. “A lot of the art I portray now is about growth.

Predominantly intrinsic growth.”

Kalief has a lot of work that represents growth, using plants and young characters to represent his ideas about where he’s from. He said he parallels humans and plants because they need to be cared for similarly as they need to be watered and pruned. “As you grow, leaves die, but that's a part of the process—you have to let these things go,” he said. He also mentioned how just like plants, humans need time and attention in order to bloom.

One of his pieces depicts three children holding a sign stating “We Grow Here, Too.” It stands as a beautiful motif for the youth of Roseland, and his own personal growth, as he continues to represent the neighborhood for its petals and not its thorns.

More of Kalief ’s work can be found on his Instagram @kaysean_ OCTOBER 14, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

ARTS

drawing on his shoes...I had no knowledge, I didn’t look at anyones previous work.”

“He was giving me jackets—that was the first pair of Air Force 1s I ever did. He convinced me to start doing that as a business. And I was charging really low prices for that stuff,” he said. “All of my first pieces in the beginning was from Chris—and that was just garments and shoes.”

The custom items gained some traction on social media, which led more of Micah’s peers to request customizations on their clothes. One person started giving Micah several different items to design, including pieces for Micah to design for himself to keep. Chris, a friend that we both share, essentially sparked Micah’s custom design business that is still thriving all these years later.

What Chris did for Micah speaks volumes to how friendship and community makes up for a lot of the resources we lack out-south. Even without the financial freedom to explore this talent, Micah was able to practice and blossom simply because his friend believed in his abilities and encouraged him to take it to the next level.

MICAH MUHAMMAD, 23, AND ORIGINAL PAINTING. PHOTO BY ESTHER IKORO.

M

icah Muhammad does acrylic paintings on canvas, mixed media, he customizes shoes, garments and accessories, and in the past he’s modified clothing as well. This year he picked up digital art. As an architecture major, he also has experience with model building and 3-D rendering.

“In high school I was restoring shoes a lot. I used to restore all my shoes. I used to buy beat shoes and pretty much put life back into them: repaint them, reglue the soles, put new shoe strings in them, clean them. I didn’t buy no cleaning stuff, I couldn’t afford none of them. I would just use home stuff.”

Micah recalled using things laying around, like tire shine, to restore the leather on his shoes. “I was using straight Wal-Mart acrylic,” he said, “if you get rained on a few times, if you walk too much in them… they ova’ with.”

He restored a pair of shoes for his brother, but aside from that, he only did the work for himself.

“I always hated painting, I used to draw with a gel pen,” Micah said. He went on to recall the first time he really picked up a brush. “I was on punishment for reasons I’m not gonna mention,” he laughed, “and I had nothing else to do because I did not have a phone and I was just like ‘you know what, I think Imma start painting.’”

Micah began to replicate pieces of work he liked, such as album covers and logos, which assured him that he could indeed paint.

In high school, his friend Chris asked him to put art on a pair of shoes and then proceeded to commission Micah to paint on other pieces of his clothing. “I was like ‘Yeah, I can do it.’ So I was taking that same acrylic paint from Wal-Mart and just 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 14, 2021

“I really feel like I have an art style; it's just like flesh tones, a lot of reds, pinks, yellows, beige. It's really just like guts, anatomy—I opened your stomach and these are the colors that I see,” he explained. “When I was growing up, my favorite color was red.”

Micah’s art is exactly how he describes it: beautifully gory. He takes tones and textures that might seem morbid and makes something unique and stunning out of them. “I feel like my art is death-related or that's how it seems.”

Micah searched for the words to describe his art style, “It’s not realism, its surrealism. Take all that, put it into a box, that would be that category. I feel like I have many styles. I can do realism as well, it's just boring to me! Outside of commissions, I would say I just make [art] for myself. My pieces that I made, I didn’t sell, my bags that I made, I didn’t sell, my shoes that I made, I didn’t sell. I just feel like commissions, that's one thing because it's a business, but I really feel like I make art for myself. Like ‘I want to see this done.’”

Micah added that he creates the kind of art that he sees is missing from the world, as far as he can see. Although he enjoys his art style, he acknowledges how his work creates mixed emotions in its reception. Whether it's loved, misunderstood, or disliked, creating solely for his enjoyment doesn’t always elicit the same reactions.

“All my homies from the hood [and not from the hood], they be like ‘Oh that's raw, that's cool’ but they don’t really get it,” he recalled, “I feel like it was harder to appease that crowd, cause that [was] most of my friend base and my following at first.

I feel like a lot of people wanna see art about Black struggle. It's harder when you have this random stuff going on, people are like ‘what is that?’. I feel like it’s just harder to reach different crowds because people are like ‘Um, I don’t really like that.’”

“Being self taught, I only really know how to do art a certain way,” Micah said. “A lot of my ways are unorthodox. So as I was teaching myself to paint—I still say to this day—I don’t paint the way normal people paint.”

“Basically, I would create the shading as the paint was still wet. I feel like that's something people do with oil paint—I never did oil paint. When I’m using acrylic

ARTS

PHOTO BY ESTHER IKORO.

paint, as the paint is still wet I’ll still try to shade it or try to create some kind of pattern in there.”

“In the end it works out,” Micah shrugged, “But I feel like when you’re drawing more of the realism and peoples faces, it’s really just a way to do it, you know, you gotta do the lines and you gotta draw it out first—I just go right into it, I just start painting.

Sometimes just to get a sense of scale, I’ll draw it out first, but I don’t even go based off of scale.”

Micah started laughing, and began to describe how he maps out the areas he's not going to paint in, instead. “Like if I paint in this area, his head is going to look like a potato,” he joked, “so it’s really backwards. And being [left-handed], people say ‘Y’all write backwards’ and I feel like my brain works that way with a lot of stuff.”

He said that doing things in his own way was the biggest challenge of being a self-taught artist because it makes everything take longer. Formally trained artists might have a better idea of how to bring a piece together, the steps it takes, and their order. Micah even said that when he tried to mimic these practices, he hated it because it felt unnatural.

“That's where I feel like I found a home in surrealism. Ain't no guidelines, I don’t have to make sure his head ain’t shaped like a potato, it could [be] shaped like a potato if it wants to!”

Micah said that creating a sense of peace of mind, which he still struggles with, and being disciplined enough to take breaks and rest are components that have helped him grow as an artist.

“I learned that my style is really different, and when you’re self taught you have more room to create a style that’s never seen before. As you create trying to stick to guidelines, it kind of makes you not want to go outside of that and create something new.”

Because he is self-taught, Micah feels like he does not have the same parameters in his mind that may serve as boxes to be trapped in. Although self-teaching has created obstacles, he looks more to the freedom it brings.

“Also challenging, trying to pay for all of that stuff,” Micah began, then he suddenly remembers a very important point: “Resources, being out-south, is really crazy,” he exclaimed, “I didn’t know a lot of stuff existed. I didn’t know people have work studios that you can have a membership at, and they’ll give you materials, give you work space to use, and you can go there and just work. And they supply a lot of stuff, a lot of machinery—all that stuff is up north!

All that stuff is out of reach, especially for someone without a car, and that's something else that’s also been gatekept. People don’t really say anything about that.”

Thinking back on the murals around Roseland and Pullman, Micah recalled seeing paintings of important Black figures and pieces of history, but that isn’t what he modeled his art after. “I just don’t enjoy making art about pain,” he said.

Micah touched on another important point; the expectation that Black artists have to constantly share stories of pain and tragedy through their work is harmful. It’s already hard enough to live in certain environments, they shouldn’t have to constantly replicate that in order for their work to be considered valid.

Some artists, like Kalief, draw directly from their former surroundings and create beautiful work. However, Micah practicing the freedom to create images unrelated to that is just as beautiful and showcases a form of being inspired by where he’s from, just in a different way.

Artists from the South Side continue to forge paths of their own despite the barriers that stand before them. The flowers that bloom from this side of the city are resilient and powerful, and no matter what, one can always trust that they will find a way to grow. More of Micah’s work can be found on his Instagram @m1cvh A longer version of these interviews is available online at southsideweekly.com.

Chima Ikoro is the Community Organizing section editor at the Weekly. She last wrote about complications with mutual aid work.

OCTOBER 14, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

IMMIGRATION

Nowhere

A personal essay about living between the distant past and the distant present.

BY GUSTAVO RUEDA

I

t would never have occurred to me that one day I would be looking back to discover that I no longer belonged anywhere, either from the country I came from or the country where I am currently living; that I would not know when or at what moment it happened; if I had brought it upon myself and if there was something I could do to change my circumstances. I never thought I would realize that the country where I was born had become a geographical reference I could only recognize on a map. But that did not worry me as much as this other discovery: that for several years I had no longer felt attached to that country. I no longer saw it as my birthplace, but as a mere circumstance in the life that I had lived. That country called Mexico had practically disappeared from my life and it did not cause me any apprehension, rather it was the sense of emptiness, a very similar feeling to when you lose something unexpectedly.

I lost my country, but did I find a new country? Did I adopt a new place I could call home and did not need a map to remember its shape? It is not that simple. I know some people would think that you might lose something, but you might win something after moving into a new place, a new country. That is a fantasy. Once you lose something, you will eventually lose more, until one day you look back and what you had before is lost, and you might feel lost as well. I know some people might

ILLUSTRATION BY JENNIFER CHAVEZ

say that you just need to look around and find yourself, but first you need to understand where you are, and that is the most difficult part, to realize you have ended up not here nor there, but nowhere.

And along with the realization of having lost the old country, I also discovered that the language in which I had learned to imagine the world was no longer the same because it was turning against me, or against my memory. And this worried me, as I had already realized that I had been missing words such as estupefacto, transterrado or obnubilación. And I know it may sound a bit ridiculous since words, especially these, among many more that I needed to remember, have not stopped being spoken. There are thousands of people that might pronounce them practically every day and there would be no reason to want to remember them.

But remembering these kinds of words, like dilapidación, tribulación, acertijo or latrocinio, was very important in my life.

And if I was not able to remember them, it meant as though I was not able to remember myself, especially not remembering the moment when I heard them for the first time, and the impression they made on me.

I just wonder, if at this point in my life, should I truly care to know where I come from, to understand who I am? Is it that I should know silly words in my native language so I always remember

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 14, 2021

where I came from or what I represent?

As I looked back, I used to think I could not forget my place of origin and remembering it was the only possibility I had to make sure I belonged there and in my family. However, I did not consider that once you do not live in a certain place you also stop belonging to it physically and permanently. I am alone here, meaning, I am my only family, my only present, so I cannot long for the past, even for the language I used to speak. That language somehow belongs to a memory, to a memory that as time passes, is vanishing from my head.

Then I wondered, how would it be possible to keep living after that? Once we decide to exile ourselves (or in case, are banished or expelled), is it that we could never again be able to claim our origins? Is it that we could no longer be children of the old country? Perhaps the only thing we could become is everlasting nomads, forced to live on the periphery of the world, without a past and hopelessly living without a real present (because somehow it does not belong to us or because we do not know how to embrace it), living outside of time for the rest of our lives. Or maybe not. I am still not completely sure about this. And that is why I am writing, because I want to remember these words and many more with the hope that I will remember myself and who I have been for the past 15 years or

so, away from Mexico, in the U.S., always between the distant past and the distant present as well.

The more I think about it, it was no longer just leaving Mexico and entering the unknown, but rather having run the risk of losing everything, not only my dignity and my pride for giving up my life in Mexico, but also losing the words that constituted my whole life, and even the voice with which I could pronounce any of those words. It was as if once I crossed the border it was no longer possible for me to turn back, which meant that my language, my words, my voice, even my memories were going to become part of a different life, of a different time also, and it was only going to be possible to revisit it in my dreams (it is hard to dream in one language), and that there was nothing I could do about it. I had no other option—because I did not want to think of any other option—but to simply accept my destiny. Once I crossed the border I had to resign myself if I wanted to blend into this new reality, this nowhere, even if that meant losing myself.

I thought it would only be enough for me to close my eyes and imagine that one day I would recover my life (rather, my past), and that I could continue living in this new reality, even if it was not in its entirety, only a few fragments that I would have to keep saved, and in due course, I could be able to put them together and, thus, be able to rebuild my

IMMIGRATION reality in its entirety in this country.

But there are some days when I cannot help but to think that nothing that I have experienced in more than fifteen years living in this reality has not meant much. Sometimes I have the impression that everything is ephemeral, that it did not leave the impression I was expecting.

And I know I am wrong because after so many years, pretty much all of what has become of my life in this country has represented the only life I have, and that the life I had in Mexico no longer represents me nor defines me. At some point it lost weight and consistency because it belonged to the distant past. Looking back made me discover that even though I never learned to live in the moment, because I thought it was not worth being the present, I learned to go beyond the limit of this imaginary border between Mexico and the United States. However, it is impossible to avoid the feeling that in reality I am not living either here or there, but somewhere or maybe nowhere, in which time has been buried and I am

not able to escape. I have been living on the border looking in every direction, but incapable of finding which way is the right direction.

Beyond the biblical message about running away from his divine mission, I wondered about Jonah trapped inside the belly of the whale—what he really thought about away from his reality. If Jonah was completely alone, what did he think about, especially if he did not have anyone to whom he could speak, anyone to who could answer him, anyone to who could guide him in the darkness that surrounded him for the amount of time he was trapped? I often wonder what the ordinary man named Jonah thought about the time he spent alone, uncommunicated, isolated, far away from everything he knew. What did he think, feel and imagine during three full days and nights? What would Jonah’s dreams have been like inside the whale? I wonder that once he was expelled by the whale, did Jonah cease to be himself? I wonder if he really changed beyond the biblical version, if after being swallowed

by the whale something else inside of him woke up, and I am not talking about the religious vocation, but a new sense of belonging, if he regained a new existence. I think he did. He changed.

Jonah was no longer the same, but at the same time, he continued to be just like we do after living inside the belly of the United States. Somehow he saw and perceived reality in a slightly different way. I do not know if it is better or worse.

Do not know if we, as we continue living inside the United States, have changed the way we see reality. Do we understand it more? Do we understand each other better, perhaps more empathetic with the type of person we have become? I wonder if Jonah became less or more afraid of what was out there after living inside the whale, if he did not become paranoid and believed that something or someone was coming to get him, just like I see with my friends, who live worried that ICE will come to get them. Just like Jonah, sometimes I feel that I am still inside the whale, surrounded by a thick darkness,

feeling alone and in exile.

What I can only be sure of is that I am no longer the same. But as long as I can still be here, writing, I have decided not to look back anymore. I no longer need to look into the distant past and feel lost, nor that I have lost my country or my language, or even the way I dream. I promised myself that no matter what happens, I know I can keep imagining my reality in this place called the United States. This essay was originally published in Coordenadas Magazine. It has been edited for style.

Gustavo Rueda spent several years between Mexico City and Chicago writing articles for different newspapers about books, movies, and theater. He currently lives in Chicago working as a translator and writer. This is his first story for the Weekly.

OCTOBER 14, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

PHOTO BY ALMA CAMPOS

Op-Ed: America Owes Haitian Migrants Asylum The United States has a responsibility to Haitian asylum seekers.

BY FREDERIQUE DESROSIERS

T

he American understanding of Haiti is stained with poverty, natural disasters, and political turmoil. As a result, some Americans think Haitians just need to figure it out and stop putting their hands out, while others take a paternalistic approach and think the United States should interfere and “help” even if that is not what Haitians want. These sentiments are bolstered by misrepresentations of Haiti in the media and in academia.

The production of history is shaped by power; Haitian Scholar, MichelRolph Trouillot, wrote about this in his book, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Trouillot suggests

that our knowledge and understanding of history is limited and incomplete because a lot of what actually happened is left out, intentionally or unintentionally. This has to do with who has the power to write history. Many Americans find it difficult to accept history as it actually happened, which allows them to view current events with a narrow lens and form opinions that lack historical and factual basis.

On September 17, the last of nearly 14,000 asylum-seeking Haitian migrants who had gathered under an international bridge at the border in Del Rio, Texas were forcibly removed. The injustice at the border became a crisis for President Joe Biden’s administration when both

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 14, 2021

the special envoy for Haiti and the State Department’s senior legal advisor resigned in protest of the treatment of Haitian migrants.

But let's make this clear: Biden administration officials will go to sleep at night in their beds. It's unlikely they will worry where their next meal will come from. The true crisis is this: the United States has created the very conditions that Haitians are fleeing from. The American government has tried over and over to wash their hands clean of responsibility for Haiti’s corruption. Now, President Biden joins the long line of presidents who have turned their back on Haitians when they are facing the consequences of

American imperialism.

They say history is written by the victors, but in the spirit of reframing our understanding of history, I’ll say this: history is written by the colonizers for the colonial gaze. It’s important to keep that in mind when looking at countries like Haiti. And when attempting to understand Haiti’s current state, we have to go way back.

The history of exploitation in Haiti is extensive and spans hundreds of years. We’ll have to go back all the way to 1492 when Christopher Columbus landed on Hispaniola, the island that would eventually become Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Through trade

OPINION with the Indigenous people, the Taíno, Columbus discovered they had a lot of gold and the following year began colonizing the Caribbean with brutal zeal. The Spanish enslaved the Taíno and within twenty-five years had killed most of the Indigenous people by enslavement, massacre, or disease brought by the colonists. By 1535, the Taíno culture and people were nearly wiped out from the island. In 1697, Spain gave up a portion of the island (now Haiti) to the French. This portion of Haiti became France's most profitable colony because they forced people into slavery to massproduce crops.

With the Taíno people decimated, the French had to look elsewhere for free labor. In less than 100 years, more than 800,000 people were stolen from West Africa and sent to Haiti to work. More than a third of the Atlantic slave trade landed in Haiti. Slavery in Haiti was brutal and severe; enslaved people faced inhumane conditions. Enslaved people in Haiti produced 60% of coffee and forty percent of the sugar exported to Europe in the 1780s. The life expectancy for an enslaved person at the time was twentyone years.

In 1791, the enslaved population launched an uprising against the French that sparked a thirteen-year war, resulting in the largest successful revolution of enslaved people in history. When American leaders heard of the revolt, they provided support for the white colonists on the island and allowed them to come to America as refugees with the enslaved people they “owned.” In 1804, Haiti was declared an independent nation, second only to the United States in the Western Hemisphere, the first Black republic and first nation to be run by formerly enslaved people.

What was more remarkable and perhaps unknown to most, the first constitution of Haiti was among the first written national constitutions in the “modern world.” Under their constitution, Haiti was the first nation to permanently outlaw slavery. Out of fear and disbelief, the United States refused to recognize Haiti as an independent sovereign nation for almost sixty years. They feared this would inspire slave insurrections in the

States, but they also found it hard to wrap their minds around the fact that the enslaved population had the desire, much less the capacity, to wage a war against the French Army, win, establish their own nation and have a robust constitution. The world was silent around the Haitian Revolution. How is it that a groundbreaking revolution, that yielded more liberty and human rights than the American and French Revolution, heard crickets from the international community then and now, too? It’s probably not good for the narrative of

ILLUSTRATION BY MELL MONTEZUMA

Haiti as a country of poor Black people who can’t govern themselves.

In 1825, after recognizing Haitian independence, France threatened to invade them again if they wouldn’t reimburse them for the loss of their property—the Haitian people themselves and their labor. Haiti paid 150 million gold francs, the equivalent of twenty-one billion dollars, to France to assure they would never return to slavery. France demanded more money than they knew was possible, causing Haiti to default on the payments and sending the young

country into economic decay. Again the world said nothing.

Capitalizing on this silence, in 1915, at the first sign of opportunity, the United States invaded Haiti to advance and promote their economic interests.

The U.S. Marines sought to change the Haitian constitution to allow foreigners to own land and also to move Haiti’s financial reserves to the United States.

The U.S. Department of State also made the Haitian Senator Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave the head of state against the popular consensus of Haitians. The United States used Dartiguenave to dismantle any attempts to remove U.S. influence in Haiti. During his presidency, the Haitian Army was disbanded, the legislature was dissolved, and less than five percent of the population voted during elections to change the constitution.

During the occupation the U.S Marines brought infrastructure, ordering the building of roads, schools, and hospitals by Haitians who were forced to work and paid little to no money. For almost twenty years, the United States occupied Haiti and crushed Haitians who opposed it. Fifteen thousand Haitians were killed for several reasons during this time. In 1934, the United States withdrew from Haiti but still controlled the purse strings and maintained heavy influence.

Haiti was vulnerable and fell under the dictatorship of the Duvaliers from 1957 to1986. They were a father and son who ruled the island under violence and political and social oppression supported by the U.S. government in order to prevent the island from falling to communism. Nearly thirty years of U.S.backed political corruption, violence, and terror plummeted the island further into extreme poverty, with eighty percent of the population illiterate and out of work.

This caused many to flee the island.

The U.S. government decided that the Haitians who began arriving in the 1980s, seeking asylum, were not political refugees, but rather economic refugees seeking a better life and better jobs. This made them ineligible for asylum.

During the Carter administration, President Jimmy Carter sought ways to

OCTOBER 14, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

OPINION help the Haitian immigrants, making Haitian and Cuban immigrants able to apply for the Cuban-Haitian Entrant Program (CHEP) in order for them to be granted asylum only if they were in the country before October 10, 1980. If any Haitians or Cubans attempted to arrive after that they would be charged and deported.

When Ronald Reagan assumed presidency, he enforced these rules. The Coast Guard intercepted and seized any ships and boats carrying refugees and sent them back to Port-au-Prince in Haiti. While on the boat to the capital, the Coast Guard conducted interviews to possibly grant asylum to some of the Haitian immigrants. Out of 25,000 applications, only twenty-eight were granted asylum.

In 1990, Haiti had what was considered to be a free and fair election. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected as president with sixty-seven percent of the vote. Aristide had a hopeful message for Haiti: to end the ethical and economic battles of the poor. This did not go over well because the country’s rich and elite, who opposed him, were forced to pay high taxes. Aristide was ousted by a military coup led by Lieutenant General Raoul Cedras. As a result, Haiti fell deeper into economic despair causing over 40,000 people to leave the country.

Many sought to leave the country, fleeing because of poor economic conditions and violence. Over 40,000 Haitians made efforts to leave Haiti, fleeing to the United States. Many of these people fled on makeshift boats, risking their own lives and the lives of their family and children to make it to Florida. Again, there was only silence from the world.

Under Cedras, Haiti sunk further into despair. All the work and promises made

by Aristide could not be kept, all those removed from power by the Aristide administration were restored to their previous positions, the army took control over the prisons and many other aspects of Haitian life. The military created a culture of fear and violence, targeting the poor, women, and anyone who stood in their way. Again, tens of thousands of Haitians fled Haiti in hopes of gaining political asylum.

On May 24, 1992 President George H.W. Bush enacted Executive Order 12807, Interdiction of Illegal Aliens. In this

order, he suspended the entry of Haitian immigrants coming by sea to the United States without “necessary documentation, to establish reasonable rules and regulations regarding, and other limitations on, the entry, or attempted entry of aliens into the United States and to repatriate aliens interdicted beyond the territorial sea of the U.S.” The reasoning given by the Bush administration was that the influx of refugees was causing a dangerous and unmanageable situation. After eighteen Haitian people died when their boat capsized on their way to Florida, the Bush administration used the tragedy to halt Haitian immigration under the guise of preventing any more deaths due to the unsafe boat conditions.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that over a thousand Haitians were killed following the coup led by Cedras, so it must have been human rights violations the Haitians were fleeing from. Even so, the Bush administration did not change their mind, and the policy stayed in effect.

When Bill Clinton was running for president, he rebuked Bush’s decision to turn his back on the Haitian people and said that he would change things if elected.

This promise rang hollow when Haitians who arrived by boat continued to be forc-

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 14, 2021

ibly returned. Clinton clarified that his plan to help Haitians was not to accept them into the country, but rather to improve the conditions that led them to flee in the first place, leaving countless Haitians who hoped a Clinton presidency would improve chances for asylum with few options.

Shortly after Clinton began his term as president, he made his intention to remove the military faction that ousted Aristide to restore a democratically elected leader and rebuild the economy. On September 19, 1994, with the support of the United Nations Security Council, the United States intervened and Aristide was restored to the presidency. Operation Restore Democracy, as it was called, was lauded as a success by the U.S. government, but at great cost to the Haitian people.

In exchange for American intervention, Haiti was bound to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment program, which transitioned the country into a market economy. Haiti suffered under these neoliberal policies that privatized national enterprises. The Clinton administration forced the country to lower their tariffs, which allowed cheap American-grown crops to take over the markets.

Many rural Haitians worked as farmers for a living. Under these new policies, the

Haitian government had to remove the subsidies on things people needed to make a living. Let’s also keep in mind that due to centuries of agricultural exploitation starting from the colonial plantation system, less than one percent of Haiti’s natural forests remain. Haiti is one of the most deforested countries on Earth, causing many types of environmental issues like erosion and species extinction, that ultimately left the soil barren. This created a dependency on imported goods. Haitian businesses could not keep up with the international market. This resulted in a transfer of wealth out of Haitian farmers into the subsidized farmers in the developed world. Many Haitian farmers were pushed off their land.

Haiti has more NGOs per capita than any country in the world, making it the most privatized social service sector in the west. These unelected organizations are unaccountable to the Haitian people, they call the shots and can profit off of the people they are supposed to help. The phrase “NGO” is kind of a misnomer because in Haiti they are seventy percent funded by Northern countries American governments.

In 2010, Haiti was rocked by an earthquake that ended a brief period of prosperity. Thousands died, and those who survived

PHOTO BY ALMA CAMPOS

faced famine and disease. After the earthquake, when disaster relief money poured in from various organizations around the world, less than one cent of each dollar went to the Haitian government; meanwhile, NGOs got forty-three cents, and thirty-three cents ended up with the U.S. military. Billions of dollars were donated to the Haitian Earthquake Relief, but because of the lack of transparency and accountability for the NGOs that raised all that money, there's no way to know how it was actually spent.

Most of the organizations failed to deliver the long-term promises they made to the Haitian people. Instead, NGOs spent a lot of money on temporary solutions to long-term problems; there were temporary shelters, but no homes, so survivors found themselves homeless again.

The American Red Cross (an NGO) raised $500 million and continued to raise money after they reached their relief goal, but after almost eleven years, people are confused as to where the money went because conditions in Haiti have not improved.

NPR and ProPublica launched an investigation to find out where the Red Cross spent the money. They found “a string of poorly managed projects,” questionable spending and dubious claims of success.”

The Red Cross says they provided homes to 130,000, but records show they only built six permanent homes. They over-promised and under-delivered. They didn't have any real plan for what would actually work for the Haitian people because they did what they thought would generate good publicity, and they were out of touch with the needs and wants of the people they were “helping.”

In the past several years, political unrest, instability, and violence have become the norm and this year is no exception.

Haiti's President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated this summer. Weeks later, the country was struck by another earthquake that killed thousands.

Haitian people are resilient and strong, but they are exhausted. They are carrying centuries of generational trauma with no end in sight. It’s time for the United States and the entire world to do right

by Haiti. It’s time for the people of Haiti to stop paying the price for Liberation.

Bay kou. bliye, pote mak sonje is a Haitian proverb that means, “the culprit forgets, the victim remembers.” It is time

for us to be honest about America’s role in destabilizing Haiti as punishment for having the audacity to imagine freedom, and having the courage to fight for it and win. It’s time for us to acknowledge the fact that the United States is largely responsible for the accumulation of migrants at the border in September 2021.

Offering Haitian migrants asylum is not just the right thing to do, it is the least that is owed to the Haitian people.

Still, President Biden decided to send people back to a country they did not destroy, where their future is uncertain and bleak. The situation at the border in Del Rio, Texas may soon be forgotten by the American public and the world.

President Biden joins a line of U.S. presidents that upheld the same silence that dismissed and minimized one of the most significant human rights revolutions in history.

There is no quick fix to the issues Haiti is facing right now. There are centuries of oppression to rectify. One thing is certain, until the people of Haiti are given what they’re owed, we will continue to see the same pattern we’ve seen throughout history.

If you find yourself wondering why people would leave their home with only a bag, cross through multiple countries in South America, risk getting beaten by border patrol, risk detention in inhumane U.S. immigrant facilities, endure hunger and thirst, and put their lives and the lives of their families in harm’s way, remember this quote from Toussaint Louverture, one of the most famous leaders of the Haitian Revolution: “We have known how to face dangers to obtain our liberty, we shall know how to brave death to maintain it.”

Remember that Haitians fought for thirteen years for freedom, remember that they made makeshift boats and braved the sea, remember they packed up their entire lives. We should not make the same mistake of underestimating what people will do for freedom and what they will risk to attain it. The silence must be broken. Frederique Desrosiers is the policy organizer at Chicago Votes. This is her first time writing for The Weekly.

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Memories of Jackson Park The Weekly is collecting personal stories about Jackson Park and thoughts and reactions to the Obama Presidential Center development.

Share your memories and thoughts here: bit.ly/jacksonparktrees For audio submissions: Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to malik.jackson@southsideweekly.com.

OCTOBER 14, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

IMMIGRATION

I Was a Stranger and You Welcomed Me Volunteers prepare to support immigrants released from detention following the passage of the Illinois Way Forward Act.

BY DHIVYA SRIDAR

T

he Monday early morning air was calm and crisp outside the Greyhound bus station. Small groups of Chicagoans slowly spilled out into the streets, ready to begin a new week. Inside, the station was crammed with exhausted and frantic travelers. The air was warm and damp.

At the ticket counter, a long line of passengers formed with duffle bags in hand as they waited. On benches, squirming children leaned on their parents, restless for their buses to arrive.

In one corner of the station, a couple stood near three metal carts packed with bulky cloth bags. They wore bright red lanyards with badges labeled “Volunteer.” Quietly, they observed the travelers around them.

Next to them, two women dozed peacefully. They wore simple clothing: light pastel shirts, dark pants, and worn-out tennis shoes. One of them awoke and approached the volunteers timidly. “Puedo tomar un café?” she asked, requesting a cup of coffee.

After asking how she wanted her coffee, one of the volunteers scurried off to get it.

The Chicago Immigration Transit Assistance (CITA) works to help immigrants after they have been released from detention. “Our goal is to end ICE detention,” said Colin McCormick, CITA’s program director. “That means squashing detention centers when and where we can, so we are celebrating this change.”

Unfortunately, however, members of CITA and the Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants are worried about implementation of the Illinois Way Forward Act—specifically, the closures of

detention facilities.

“ICE already conducts dangerous release methods, such as abandoning people without resources in rural areas.

Imagine that on a large scale,” said Ryan Smith, director of housing and case management at the Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants. “They will likely keep everyone incarcerated until the final day. This will create a major issue as organizations like us won't be able to accommodate the influx of releases.”

It is also likely that people who were detained will be transferred to out-of-state facilities instead of being released, Smith said.

As the new law is implemented, which will prohibit state or local governments from signing contracts with the federal government to detain immigrants, the non-profit is already working with representatives and advocacy groups to prepare and help with the mass release of people currently detained, Smith said.

After some time, McCormick expects that CITA may not serve as many immigrants who have been released locally due to local detention center closures. “But we plan on being here,” McCormick said. “Migration to the U.S. from the border will increase as issues like climate change continue.”

Increased immigration from the border emphasizes the importance of CITA’s history and efforts. Their work started in October 2018 as an independent grassroots effort, according to McCormick, and was fueled by a few volunteers working once per week with funds raised through a GoFundMe page. As the effort grew, it was integrated as CITA into the non-profit organization Interfaith Com-

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 14, 2021

munity for Detained Immigrants.

Since its inception, the program has grown to provide support to immigrants at the Greyhound station every week from Monday through Saturday at 5:45am to 7:45am. Across the street from the bus station, CITA now also maintains two large storage lockers filled with supplies such as snacks, clothing, and overthe-counter medications.

In 2019, CITA and the Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants supported about 5,500 people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, attended 1,341 court watch hearings, and housed forty to fifty asylum-seekers, according to Karina Donayre, the organization’s director of communications.

CITA volunteers praise the program not only for helping immigrants directly, but also for shedding light on their stories and highlighting their humanity. “Every story is heartbreaking,” CITA volunteer David Grossman said. “We’ve met people who have told us, ‘I was being extorted by a gang,’ or ‘I caught a cold crossing the river because my clothes were wet.’”

CITA volunteers come from diverse backgrounds, uniting to help immigrants.

“The program is a crossroads of unlikely paths,” McCormick said. “Everyone is shocked by each other’s humanity, and human connection is seen from all angles.”

On September 4, three men were released from Pulaski County Jail in downstate Ullin, Illinois, because the jail ended its contract with ICE. When the jail announced in August that it would be ending its contract with ICE earlier than the implementation of the Illinois Way Forward Act, advocates worked to prevent the transfer of individuals from the jail to other ICE facilities.

PHOTO BY DHIVYA SRIDAR

Approximately fifty-five community organizations and legal service providers sent a letter to the Biden administration demanding the release of people from Pulaski. Ultimately, only three were released and the rest were transferred to other ICE facilities, drawing criticism from advocates.

“While we welcome home the three people who have finally been released, we are disgusted that ICE continues to jail all of the other people it was holding at Pulaski,” said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

At the core of CITA’s work is justice for immigrants, whom the volunteers plan to continue meeting at the Greyhound station to offer support.

“One of the things I tell everyone is that the border is here in Chicago at this Greyhound station,” McCormick said.

“What we’re seeing right in front of us are the same immigration issues structurally, plus forty-eight hours of travel.

“I believe that everyone should have the right to move from or stay where they live…asylum seekers have lost the right to stay where they live. Whether it be because of lack of access to food or persecution, they rarely have agency in coming, and they are saving their own lives by doing so.” Dhivya Sridar is a graduate student at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and a medical student at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine. She is interested in investigative reporting and analysis using frameworks of capitalism and imperialism. This is her first story for the Weekly.

POLITICS

Family Business

Ald. Cardenas’ brother made thousands from a sweetheart parking-lot deal with two public schools during Riot Fest.

BY KELLY GARCIA

A

deal to rent parking spots at two elementary schools in La Villita during Riot Fest, a music festival in Douglass Park, has come as a surprise and an inconvenience to local residents.

In a contract obtained by South Side Weekly, Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy and Telpochcalli School, which share the building and the parking lot, agreed to rent out the lot to Jose Cardenas, the brother of Alderman George Cardenas (12th), for the annual weekend private festival in the neighboring community.

Jose Cardenas agreed to pay a $3,000 fee evenly split between both schools while charging attendees $10 to $30 for parking spots and forcing residents, who typically have free access to the parking lot when school is out of session, to park elsewhere. Ald. Cardenas denied that he knew about the contract, but said he spoke to his brother to “dissuade him from doing that.”

Jose Cardenas did not respond to the Weekly’s request for comment.

Meanwhile residents of Marshall Blvd, where the schools are located, say they were never warned by the school that the parking lot would be off-limits during Riot Fest. Instead, they found out through flyers posted by activists around the perimeter of the school warning festival-goers not to use the parking lot because the money would be funneled to the alderman’s family.

“They ultimately abused their power to sell the neighborhood and we don’t even know where the money went,” said Maria Rivera, a resident of Little Village who lives across the street from the schools.

In a statement provided to the Weekly, Chicago Public Schools said that

they were aware of the contract with Jose Cardenas’ company, but that they weren’t obligated to notify nearby residents and that the lot isn’t for public use.

The individual schools that share the lot negotiated the terms of the contract. At a September 2 Telpochcalli local school council meeting, LSC members initially did not approve of the contract because of lack of communication from Cardenas in previous rentals. In 2019, Jose Cardenas allegedly didn’t notify Telpochcalli that he was using the parking lot with just the approval of the Saucedo LSC. This year, Telpochcalli members said they felt the decision was rushed and that they had no choice but to approve the rental, since the Saucedo LSC had already approved it. Members ultimately voted unanimously in favor.

On August 26, members of the Saucedo local school council voted to approve the contract 7-1. The lone “no” vote was cast by the LSC’s community representative, Miguel Blancarte, Jr. “My concern was the well-being of the community,” Blancarte said.

“Community members in the past haven’t enjoyed having the parking lot rented during Riot Fest because of the disturbance it does to the community and those that live en-route to Douglass Park.”

Blancarte said he was not aware that the parking lot was being rented to Ald. Cardenas’s brother or how much he was charging attendees. “I think there should be more transparency when there’s an event coming into a community,” he said.

“I think there should be transparency on who’s putting together a festival. I didn’t know about this and I’m not sure if the principals knew either.”

A spokesperson for the Chicago

Board of Ethics said they couldn’t provide an opinion on whether Ald. Cardenas violated the code of ethics, but did say that the law “does not per se prohibit City officials or employees or their family members from contracting with sister agencies like the CPS.” In a heated Twitter exchange with Alderwoman Rossana RodriguezSanchez (33rd) over the parking lot deal, Ald. Cardenas tweeted, “I suggest you get the facts straight here. Call the principals!”

During a budget hearing at City Council the next day, Ald. RodriguezSanchez said Ald. Cardenas threatened her outside the chambers for tweeting about the parking lot deal. “He asked me to talk about what happened on Twitter,” she said. “He said I didn’t have the facts and that he didn’t know about his brother’s contract.” Then, she says, he began yelling at her and said, “there are consequences to what you're doing.”

Ald. Cardenas said he approached Ald. Rodriguez-Sanchez about her comments so that there was a mutual understanding that he “had nothing to do” with the parking lot deal.

Telpochcalli principal Tamara Witzl and Saucedo principal Virginia Hiltz did not respond to requests for comment.

This isn’t the first time Ald. Cardenas has been under fire for mixing family business with politics.

Last year, the Sun-Times reported that Ald. Cardenas was named in a lawsuit by a Chicago doctor accusing his business partner of using company funds to lavish the Southwest Side alderman with campaign contributions, an expensive watch, and trips to Miami and Los Angeles. The article also showed that Ald. Cardenas recommended

PHOTO BY KELLY GARCIA

that the company—Omni Medical Student Training—hire his brother, Jose Cardenas, to be their accountant which they ultimately did.

In 2009, the Tribune reported that several council members including Ald. Cardenas were using taxpayer dollars from a secret payroll fund to hire their relatives. They found that Cardenas was using the fund to pay his father for ward assistance.

His father is still employed through the City as an aldermanic aide for Cardenas’ ward, according to the Chicago Data Portal.

Ald. Cardenas intends to run for Board of Review in 2022, a three-member board that oversees property tax appeals.

His current term in the City Council is up in 2023; he has not yet indicated whether he intends to run for reelection.

“He’s made a lot of promises but fails to keep them,” Rivera said. “More than anything, the community has been deceived and we need a change.” Kelly Garcia is a freelance journalist covering education and was previously a civic reporting fellow for City Bureau and a summer reporting fellow for Injustice Watch. She last wrote for the Weekly about special education students who were left behind during COVID.

OCTOBER 14, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

POLÍTICA

Negocio entre familia

El hermano del Concejal Cárdenas ganó miles rentando el estacionamiento de unas escuelas de La Villita para Riot Fest.

POR KELLY GARCIA

U

n acuerdo para rentar el estacionamiento de dos escuelas primarias conjuntas en La Villita durante Riot Fest, un festival de música en Douglass Park, ha resultado ser una sorpresa y una inconveniencia para los residentes locales.

En un contrato obtenido por South Side Weekly, la escuela María Saucedo y la escuela Telpochcalli, que comparten el edificio y el estacionamiento, acordaron rentar el estacionamiento a José Cárdenas, hermano del concejal George Cárdenas (12°), por la duración del festival privado en la comunidad vecina.

José Cárdenas pagó una tarifa de $3,000 dividida entre ambas escuelas mientras cobraba a los asistentes entre $10 a $30 por cada espacio de estacionamiento, forzando a los residentes, que normalmente tienen acceso gratuito al estacionamiento cuando la escuela no está en sesión, a estacionarse en otro lugar. El concejal Cárdenas negó saber del contrato, pero dijo que habló con su hermano para "disuadirlo de hacer eso".

José Cárdenas no respondió a nuestra solicitud de comentarios.

Mientras tanto, los residentes del bulevar Marshall Blvd, donde se ubican las escuelas, dicen que la administración nunca les dijo que no iban a poder estacionarse ahí durante Riot Fest. Se enteraron a través de volantes colocados por activistas alrededor de la escuela, advirtiendo a los asistentes del festival que no usaran el estacionamiento porque el dinero se iría a la familia del concejal.

“Prácticamente abusaron de su autoridad para hacer negocio con este lugar y no se sabe qué se hizo ese dinero”, dijo María Rivera, una residente de La Villita que vive al cruzar la calle.

Un representante del distrito escolar dijo que estaban al tanto del contrato con la compañía de José Cárdenas, pero que no estaban obligados a notificar a los residentes locales y que el estacionamiento no era para uso público.

El liderazgo de las escuelas individuales negociaron los términos del contrato. En una reunión del concejo escolar local (LSC) de Telpochcalli el 2 de septiembre, los miembros del LSC inicialmente no aprobaron el contrato debido a la falta de comunicación de Cárdenas en años anteriores. En 2019, José Cárdenas no notificó a Telpochcalli que estaba usando el estacionamiento con solo la aprobación del LSC de Saucedo.

Este año, los miembros del concejo escolar de Telpochcalli dijeron que sintieron que la decisión fue apresurada y sentían que no tenían más remedio que aprobar el contrato, ya que el concejo escolar de Saucedo ya lo había aprobado.

Los miembros finalmente votaron a favor.

El 26 de agosto, los miembros del concejo escolar de Saucedo votaron 7-1 para aprobar el contrato. El único que no lo aprobó fue el representante comunitario del LSC, Miguel Blancarte, Jr. "Mi preocupación era el bienestar de la comunidad", dijo Blancarte. “En el pasado, los miembros de la comunidad no han estado contentos de que se rente el estacionamiento para Riot Fest debido a la perturbación que le causa a la comunidad y a los que viven en el camino hacia Douglass Park”.

Blancarte dijo que no sabía que el estacionamiento estaba siendo alquilado al hermano del concejal Cárdenas o cuánto le cobraron a los asistentes. “Creo que debería haber más transparencia sobre un evento en nuestra comunidad”,

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 14, 2021

dijo Blancarte. “Creo que debería haber transparencia sobre quién organiza un festival. Yo no sabía nada de esto y no estoy seguro si las directoras tampoco sabían".

Un representante de la Junta de Ética de Chicago dijo que no podían dar una opinión sobre si el concejal Cárdenas violó el código de ética, pero dijo que la ley "no prohíbe que los funcionarios o empleados de la Ciudad o sus familiares tengan contratos con agencias hermanas como CPS".

En un acalorado intercambio en Twitter con la concejala Rossana Rodríguez-Sánchez (33°) sobre el trato, el concejal Cárdenas tuiteó: “Te sugiero que aclares los hechos. ¡Llama a las directoras!"

Durante una junta del Concejo Municipal, Rodríguez-Sánchez dijo que Cárdenas la amenazó luego del intercambio que tuvieron en Twitter. “Me pidió que hablara sobre lo que sucedió en Twitter”, dijo. "Dijo que yo no sabía los hechos y que él no sabía sobre el contrato de su hermano". Luego, dijo la concejala que él comenzó a gritarle y le dijo: "Lo que estás haciendo tiene consecuencias".

El concejal Cárdenas dijo que se acercó a la concejala Rodríguez-Sánchez a causa de sus comentarios para que hubiera un entendimiento mutuo de que él “no tenía nada que ver” con ese trato.

La directora de Telpochcalli, Tamara Witzl, y la directora de Saucedo, Virginia Hiltz, no respondieron a nuestras solicitudes de comentarios.

Esta no es la primera vez que el concejal Cárdenas ha sido criticado por mezclar negocios familiares con la política.

El año pasado, el Sun-Times informó

que el concejal Cárdenas fue nombrado en una demanda por un médico de Chicago que acusaba a su socio de usar los fondos de la compañía para sobornar al concejal Cárdenas con contribuciones de campaña, un reloj caro y viajes a Miami y Los Ángeles. El reportaje también mostró que el concejal recomendó que la misma compañía, Omni Medical Student Training, contratara a su hermano, José Cárdenas, para que fuera su contador, lo cual hicieron.

En 2009, el Tribune informó que varios miembros del Concejo, incluido el concejal Cárdenas, usaron fondos públicos para contratar a sus familiares.

Descubrieron que Cárdenas estaba usando el fondo secreto para pagarle a su padre para hacer trabajos en su oficina.

Su padre todavía está empleado por la Municipalidad como ayudante del concejal Cárdenas, según el Portal de Datos de Chicago.

El concejal Cárdenas tiene la intención de postularse para la Junta de Revisión en 2022, una junta de tres miembros que supervisa las apelaciones de impuestos a la propiedad. Su mandato actual como concejal termina en 2023; aún no ha indicado si tiene la intención de postularse para la reelección.

“Ha hecho muchas promesas pero no las cumple”, dijo Rivera. “Más que nada, la comunidad ha sido engañada y necesitamos un cambio”. Kelly García es una periodista freelance de educación y anteriormente fue becaria de reportaje cívico en City Bureau y becaria de verano en Injustice Watch. Escribió anteriormente para el Weekly sobre los estudiantes de educación especial desatendidos durante COVID.

Scan to view the calendar online!

ILLUSTRATION BY THUMY PHAN

BULLETIN McKinley Park Community Play Garden Oktoberfest

3518 S. Wolcott Ave., Saturday, October 23, 4:00pm–7:00pm. Suggested donation $20. bit.ly/30hBpQb The McKinley Park Community Play Garden organizing committee is having a fundraiser this month and invites Chicagoans twenty-one and over for beer, wine, fall treats, and activities. All proceeds will go to support the play garden. This is only one of the events the committee has planned for October, so stay tuned for more! (Alma Campos)

Dia De Los Muertos Caravan

Back of the Yards, Saturday, October 23, 12:00pm–2:00:00pm. Free.

The Back of the Yards community will observe Dia de Muertos with its tenth annual procession—this time reinvistioned as a car and motorcycle caravan—that begins on 51st & Elizabeth, heads north up Ashland, and then turns east on 47th, before concluding with a celebratory event and the opportunity to make your own ofrenda outside of The Plant, 1400 W. 46th St. ( Jackie Serrato)

City Council Meeting

City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St., Wednesday, October 27, 10:00am. Free. chicityclerk.com The Chicago City Council will hold a full meeting to consider 2022 budgetrelated ordinances. Agenda items, and instructions for in-person and remote participation, are outlined at chicityclerk.

com. Livestream available at bit.ly/ ChiCouncilVid. ( Jim Daley)

EDUCATION CPS Health and Wellness— Gender 101

Online, Monday, October 18, 4:00pm– 5:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3m2YQUA This CPS Family and Community Engagement event will provide attendees with the opportunity to understand how to support trans and gender-expansive young people. Attendees will review key terms, recognize the positive impact that their support can have, and receive an overview of best practices that are shared with the school district. Register online.

(Maddie Parrish)

Raise Your Hand LSC Solidarity Call

Online, Tuesday, October 19, 6:00pm– 7:00pm. Free. bit.ly/2YMQ8C5 Hosted by Illinois Raise Your Hand, LSC Solidarity Calls are a space for LSC members and parents to discuss what is happening in their schools and organize around next steps. Register online. (Maddie Parrish)

Social Emotional Impact of the Pandemic on Youth Online, Monday, October 25, 12:00pm– 1:15pm. Free. bit.ly/3m2YQUA

At this CPS Family and Community Engagement event, Hartgrove Behavioral Health System and Garfield Park Behavioral Hospital will provide

an overview of various factors that lead to increased emotional distress and recommendations on how to provide support. Register online. (Maddie Parrish)

Board of Education Meeting

CPS Loop Office, 42 W. Madison St., Garden Level, Board Room, Wednesday, October 27, 10:30am. Free. cpsboe.org

Logan Center Bluesfest

Tune into the October Board of Education meeting in person at the Chicago Public Schools’ Loop office or online at cpsboe.org. Members of the public can register to speak starting October 25 at 10:30am, online or over the phone at (773) 553-1600. (Maddie Parrish)

ARTS Spooktacular Films

One City Tap, 3115 S. Archer Ave. Every Thursday in October, 8:00pm. Free admission; cash bar. bit.ly/3APh7e5 Adults twenty-one and older are invited to One City Tap every Thursday in October for screenings of “cinema that will make your skin crawl.” Guests will get complimentary popcorn, and bar staff will be offering a Halloween-themed cocktail special. (Alma Campos)

American Mariachi

Goodman Theater, 170 N. Dearborn, Various times. $25-70. bit.ly/ americanmariachi Set in the 1970s, this co-production with Dallas Theater Center tells the story of how a forgotten record sparks

an ailing mother’s memory, inspiring her daughter Lucha and her cousin to create an all-women mariachi band. The play is infused with live ranchera music and includes performances by the local Sones de México Ensemble. ( Jacqueline Serrato) Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., Friday, October 15, 5:30pm–9:30pm. Free. bit.ly/3FJKUYL This year’s Logan Center Bluesfest will include a comprehensive series of intimate concerts, conversations, and special events in which select programming is offered in-person, and all programming is live-streamed. The festival’s theme, “Daughters and Sons of the Blues,” celebrates the relationships between artists of different generations, and “explores the many branches of the Blues tree from the roots to the fruits.”

Other events include the presentation of the festival’s first commission of original blues music, a photography exhibition, book signings, interviews, and conversations honoring the history of the blues on the South Side and beyond.

(Maddie Parrish)

Halloween Family Movie Night Pilsen Food Pantry, 1850 S. Throop St., Friday, October 15, 7:00 PM–9:30 PM. Suggested donation $5 per person. bit. ly/3iS28cj

Families are invited to watch a spooky family-friendly movie for a good cause.

All proceeds from this event will be used to help secure a long-term location for the pantry’s emergency food program, OCTOBER 14, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

free clothing store, medical access projects, literacy outreach, and more.

Organizers encourage you to bring your own blanket to sit on. There will be snacks and nonalcoholic beverages available. (Alma Campos)

Southeast Side Art Roll

8334 S. Stony Island Ave., Saturday, October 16, 11:00am. Free. bit. ly/3FF5KbI Murals across the Southeast Side are the main attraction at this pedal- and foot-powered guided art tour. Hundreds of people are expected to roll through South Shore, Avalon Park and Calumet Heights to view art and architecture by local and world-renowned creators.

Properly functioning bikes, scooters, segways, skates, and skateboards are welcome, and don’t forget to wear the proper gear to operate. Registration is required. (Isabel Nieves)

Pilsen Open Studios

Various locations, Saturday, October 16, 12:00pm–8:00pm. Free. pilsenopenstudios. com The 18th St. Pilsen Open Studios was started in 2003 by a group of longtime Pilsen artists, most but not all of them Latinx. The self-guided tour offers a look into the studios of artists who work or live in the neighborhood or have a strong historical connection to it. Some storefronts, cafes, and other spaces are also opening to show work from artists without their own studios. The opening celebration will take place at 6pm at Citlalin Gallery, 2005 S. Blue Island Ave. ( Jackie Serrato)

Third Tuesday Jazz: Christian Dillingham Logan Center for the Arts, Cafe, 915 E. 60th St., Tuesday, October 19, 7:30pm.

Free. bit.ly/3anHZqb

For this series, The Hyde Park Jazz Society collaborates with the Logan Center to select musicians with a Chicago connection to perform at Café Logan on third Tuesdays during the academic year. On October 19, they will be featuring Christian Dillingham (bass), accompanied by Greg Artry (drums), and Dave Miller (guitarist).

Free admission, RSVP required. (Maddie Parrish)

Gallery Talk with Carmen Chami

National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St., Saturday, October 23, 1:30pm.

Free. nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org Join the National Museum of Mexican Art for a gallery talk with artist Carmen Chami. In this free talk, guests will gain a better understanding of her ongoing exhibition Adláteres and the Unexpected Journey,The show is up through January 16, 2022. (Maddie Parrish)

Halloween Drive-In Movie Fundraiser for Comer Children's

Chitown Movies, 2343 S. Throop St., Saturday, October 23, 6:30pm–9:00pm. $100 per car. bit.ly/3Ay2bzY This is a Halloween-themed drive-in movie screening of Beetlejuice in support of the U of C’s Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital to raise funds for critical research. Attendees may also bring a toy or an item to donate to patients and families. (Alma Campos)

Meet the Artist: Matthew Kaplan

Ford Calumet Environmental Center, 11559 S. Stony Island Ave., Saturday, October 23, 1:00pm–2:00pm. Free. bit.ly/ KaplanPhoto Join artist Matthew Kaplan for a talk on his life and work in the Calumet Region.

This event is indoors and has limited capacity. RSVP and face masks required.

Photographs from the series The Industrial Heritage of the Calumet, River and Region are currently on display in the Ford Calumet Environmental Center.

You can view them Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm. (Francisco Ramírez Pinedo)

Fuller Award Celebration of Luis Alberto Urrea

National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St., Thursday, October 28, 6:00pm–7:30pm. Free but registration required. bit.ly/UrreaFullerAward The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame will present its prestigious Fuller Award to

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 14, 2021

border writer Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil's Highway, for his lifetime contribution to literature. Urrea lives in Naperville with his family and teaches creative writing at UIC. The ceremony will be in-person and live-streamed on Zoom. In-person attendees must be vaccinated. ( Jackie Serrato)

HOUSING Committee on Housing and Real Estate

Online, Friday, October 15, 10:00am. bit. ly/3mLhGj9 The Chicago City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate will be having their regularly scheduled meeting.

(Malik Jackson)

locally grown produce and flowers, plus honey, coffee, baked goods, and more.

The nonprofit also runs a community composting site where residents can drop off their food scraps. Link card purchases are matched up to $25. (Martha Bayne)

61st Street Market

Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave., Every Saturday, 9:00am–2:00pm.

Free. bit.ly/2UqRuQo Chicagoland farmers, cheesemakers, bakers and others hawk their wares every Saturday outside the Experimental Station. The market accepts LINK and Senior Farmers Market Coupons, and all LINK purchases are matched up to $25.

(Martha Bayne)

The Backwards River Festival

Chicago Housing Authority Affordable Family Housing Workshop

Eleanor Boathouse at Park 571, 2828 S. Eleanor St., Saturday, October 16, 11:00am–7:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3atYKQh

The Chicago Housing Authority’s Community Alliance hosts regular Affordable Housing Workshops in partnership with LUCHA and the Spanish Coalition for Housing. Next workshop is October 22. (Malik Jackson)

This weekend of outdoor music, arts, activism, and knowledge sharing is intended to uplift and celebrate residents in the communities surrounding the South Branch of the Chicago River and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, such as McKinley Park, Bridgeport, PIlsen, La Villita, and Chinatown. Mainstage programming

by The Hoodoisie. For details see thebackwardriver.org. (Isabel Nieves)

LUCHA, 1600 W. Morse Ave., Friday, October 15, 10:00am–11:00am. Free.

FOOD & LAND Wood Street Farm Stand

Harvest Party

Wood Street Farm Stand, 1844 W. 59th St., Every Thursday through October, 11:00am –5:30pm. Free.

Plant Chicago, 4459 S. Marshfield Ave., Sunday, October 24, 3:00pm–6:00pm.

Free. bit.ly/3DANtuh

Hosted by Growing Home, the farm stand includes cooking demonstrations with free samples and recipe cards for healthy meals. Free farm tours are also available. WIC, SNAP, EBT, and Senior Coupons are double valued. The farm stand runs every Thursday through October 31. (Maddie Parrish)

Plant Chicago marks its tenth anniversary with an open house and party. Guests can explore the organization's new space while enjoying food from a curated selection of local partners. All proceeds fund Plant Chicago's mission of cultivating local circular economies, and allows them to continue offering both food-scrap collection and community growing spaces free of charge as well as workshops and local produce on a sliding scale. Guests over twelve must show proof of vaccination, and all guests are asked to wear masks when not eating or drinking. (Isabel Nieves)

Plant Chicago Farmers Market Davis Square Park, 4430 S. Marshfield Ave., Every Saturday through November 15, 11:00am–3:00pm. Free. bit. ly/3A2TBtd

Plant Chicago hosts a weekly farmers market through November 15 featuring

2021 PEGASUS AWARDS CEREMONY Celebrate the brightest lights in poetry, including Chicago’s Patricia Smith Oct 21

Register for FREE at PoetryFoundation.org/Events