SSW 10.20.22

INJUSTICE WATCH'S COOK COUNTY JUDICIAL GUIDE INSIDE

Public Meetings Report A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level.

DOCUMENTERS AND SCOTT PEMBERTON

September 29 Some thirty-five years in the making, the Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) launched new civilian oversight of the Chicago police at its first meeting. Anthony Driver was elected president; Oswaldo Gomez was elected vice president. The Commission is empowered to influence the makeup of CPD’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), a civilian oversight body charged with “conducting investigations into allegations” of misconduct, and the Police Board, a civilian body that focuses on disciplinary cases. The establishment of the Commission’s broad oversight function, first floated during Mayor Harold Washington’s administration (1983-1987), was approved by the City Council in July 2021. A program of District Councils—one in each of twenty-two police districts—was also created. The councils are made up of three elected representatives. In the inaugural CCPSA meeting, public commenters stressed the importance of the councils and expressed concern that the public was not sufficiently aware of their role as a component of police accountability.

Some commenters were candidates for the councils.

October 3 Mayor Lori Lightfoot presented her proposed $16.4 billion budget as a “statement of values” at the City Council 2023 City Budget Introduction meeting. The mayor touted plans to create a Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Equity ($640,056), pilot a tiny homes initiative to address homelessness ($3 million), and pre-pay pension obligations ($242 million)—all without the $42.7 million property tax hike she had initially planned on. Themes in the presentation cited her administration’s programs, investing plans to head off problems, and generally getting the City’s financial house in order. A number of initiatives rely on one-time federal government grants drawn from American Rescue Plan funds.

October 5 At its meeting the Cook County Land Bank Authority (CCLBA) Land Transactions Committee approved the sale of a vacant Garfield Park warehouse to Tru Delta, LLC, for $175,000. The property, which owes more than $450,000 in unpaid taxes, is slated to serve one hundred entrepreneurs annually as part of the The K initiative, a proposed $1.1 million business accelerator, incubator, and coworking space. While supportive of the venture—“It’s a very strong proposal”—Department of Planning and Development Commissioner Maurice Cox characterized the proposal as “bare bones” and expressed concerns: “I just want to make sure you’re not underestimating what it takes to bring this building back to life.” An amendment to CCLBA policies and procedures, which was

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 20, 2022

not available for public viewing, passed for review by the full board. It’s believed that the amendment seeks to limit the influence of external forces—City Council members, for example, and other branches of local government—on the board’s decisions. There were no public commenters.

October 6 Issues of governance, Open Meetings Act compliance, and staffing shortages were discussed at a meeting of the Chicago Housing Trust. (This body was formerly known as the Chicago Community Land Trust.) Member Kathryn Tholin pointed out that the trust is seriously understaffed to meet its responsibilities as well as underfunded without recourse to resolve these two issues. The status of several committees was reviewed, including marketing (its first Trolley Tour is scheduled for October 15); finance (“in pretty good shape,” thanks to recent grants, said member Calvin Holmes); members voted to establish a standing governance committee. The projects and policy committee reported that thirty-seven percent of the $3 million available for the Affordable Homeownership and Housing Program (AHHP) has been expended.

At its meetings, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks and Permit Review Committee heard updates about Adopt-a-Landmark funds supporting renovation of two historic Gilded Age structures on the South Side: Greenstone Church in Pullman and Glessner House on Prairie Avenue. Adopt-A-Landmark funds are generated from downtown development zoning fees and are projected to cover ninety-five percent ($1,084,235) of renovations for the church, including a crumbling serpentine stone facade and the main tower. Built in 1882, the church is home to a United Methodist congregation. Restoration to prevent leaks in the walls, roof, and gutters at Glessner House has been completed thanks to a $100,000 grant made in February. Completed in 1887, Glessner House is a National Historic Landmark.

In a City Council 2023 City Budget Hearing, members learned that the Department of Finance’s postage budget has more than doubled to $100,000 in 2022 from $48,365 in 2021. Comptroller Reshma Soni attributed the increase to mailed reminders related to the Clear Path Relief pilot program, which aims to reduce the debt burden of vehiclerelated fines and fees on low-income Chicagoans. Traditional mailing was necessary because digital reminders would not have reached Chicagoans without internet service.

Members also heard reports from the City’s budget director, Susie Park; chief financial officer, Jennie Huang Bennett; and comptroller, Reshma Soni. Members learned that the City’s “debt load” is $26 billion and heard that, in response to Council members’ questions, the City manages risk from the “top down.” A risk management group “evaluates across many departments,” explained Soni, and the City works with legal and police departments to mitigate risk and to keep insurance companies up to date on its processes. Now that environmental health and safety are within the Department of Finance, the City can work with those areas more routinely to reduce injuries. 39th Ward Ald. Samantha Nugent noted that “we’ve had catastrophic damage” from storms and are calling on federal assistance—$155 million for affordable housing, for instance.

Park reported that a broadband project originally designed to serve CPS students is being expanded.

October 7 At a hearing on the City Council 2023 City Budget, Council members heard reports from the City Clerk, City Treasurer, and the Department of Human Resources. Items covered by the clerk included city sticker sales and the absence of discounts for disabled persons, increased availability of city forms in different languages, reduced CTA fares for caregivers, and reconsideration of the size of city fines (Clerk advocated they be lower) and late fees (currently $7 to $8 million in revenue). The treasurer asked that more scholarships be distributed to high school students and reviewed salary increases. Pension fund issues were also reviewed, and the treasurer was commended for their work. Human resources reported that its staff is attempting to improve hiring by increased recruiting in diverse communities, hosting job fairs, speeding up the hiring process (candidates drop out due to its length), and better internal communication. Ninety new CPD hires were made this year.

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 10, Issue 3 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Managing Editor

Adam Przybyl

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Francisco Ramírez Pinedo Jocelyn Vega Scott Pemberton Staff Writers Kiran Misra Yiwen Lu Director of Fact Checking: Sky Patterson Fact Checkers: Siri Chilukuri, Grace Del Vecchio, Lauren Doan, Ellie Gilbert-Bair, Christopher Good, Savannah Hugueley, Kate Linderman, Zoe Pharo and Emily Soto Visuals Editor Bridget Killian Deputy Visuals Editors Shane Tolentino Mell Montezuma Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma Shane Tolentino Layout Editors Colleen Hogan Shane Tolentino 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 publish online weekly and in print every other Thursday.

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IN CHICAGO ‘Ghost buses’ continue to haunt the CTA By now, Chicagoans are no stranger to buses that never show up and “L” trains that disappear from the Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) online tracker. But two months after CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. announced a new strategic plan to strengthen reliability and rider experience, the specter of continued issues with reliability looms over the transit system crucial to so many Chicagoans’ lives.

The Sun-Times reported this week that the phenomenon of “ghost buses” has continued unabated since the CTA’s “Meeting the Moment” plan was unveiled in August. According to Commuters Take Action, a group started earlier this year that advocates for better CTA service and fair working conditions for operators, the number of crowdsourced complaints it has collected from riders has not budged.

A CTA spokesman explained the delay in fixing the delays to the Sun-Times.

The CTA’s tracker combines real-time information with information from the official schedule, but the current official schedule is from a time when staffing levels were higher, virtually ensuring some buses and trains will vanish. The CTA and its bus and rail operator unions make permanent schedule changes about twice a year. Some temporary changes have been made to train schedules, and officials plan to meet with the union representing rail operators to agree on further updates by the end of October. The CTA has not said when it plans to discuss bus schedules, however, so bus tracking may remain haunted by apparitions for the time being.

Now that’s spooky.

Chicago’s ‘land piggy bank’ under fire It’s no secret that the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) has failed to provide adequate, affordable housing for the city’s low-income people. The CHA’s 2000 ‘Plan for Transformation’ promised to replace large, aging public housing projects with 25,000 units of mixed-income housing—but while the demolition of places like Cabrini-Green, the Robert Taylor Homes, and the Harold Ickes Homes began almost immediately, only a small fraction of replacement units have been built or renovated, and tens of thousands of Chicagoans wait years for a voucher or the chance to move into a vacant unit. Last week, a ProPublica investigation revealed a different perspective on the problem: the CHA has been giving away valuable public land to private developers in gentrifying neighborhoods—with questionable returns.

To take one example, the CHA promised to build housing on the site of the former Ickes homes in the South Loop, but in 2013 transferred part of the land to the city, which built an athletic field for a nearby public selective-enrollment high school. In exchange, the CHA acquired vacant land near the former CabriniGreen complex on the Near North Side—but then gave away half of that to the Park District. The athletic field was built, the North Side lot has a park, but the land slated for public housing lies empty. Residents of the former Ickes Homes, who have been waiting for years to move back to the neighborhood, are worried they may never get the chance. More recently, the CHA has planned to lease land near the former ABLA Homes project in University Village to billionaire Joe Mansueto to develop training facilities for the Chicago Fire Soccer club, despite completing just a third of replacement units on the site.

Public housing agencies can and do transfer land, sell buildings, and change plans. But the investigation found that compared to agencies in other cities, the CHA seems particularly invested in not building new housing, despite its promises and the pressing need of low-income Chicagoans. The next meeting of the CHA Board of Commissioners is Tuesday, November 15, with more information on thecha.org.

IN THIS ISSUE public meetings report

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level. documenters and scott pemberton.....2 the wizards premieres at pilsen’s apo cultural center

A Ricardo Gamboa play combines the barrio experience and the supernatural with a hyperlocal cast. jacqueline serrato..................................4 a guide for the new era of abortion

The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America explores options for preventing and ending pregnancies, avoiding digital surveillance, and more. ella beiser................................................5 workers are on the ballot november 8

The amendment would codify legal protections for unions and prevent right-to-work laws. sky patterson...........................................7 los trabajadores ejercerán su voto el 8 de noviembre

La enmienda codificaría las protecciones legales para los sindicatos y evitaría las leyes que eliminan los derechos de los trabajadores. sky patterson...........................................8 turning point

A review of Punch 9’s sweeping look at Harold Washington’s life and legacy. christian belanger...............................10 lowriders take over the pier

Slow & Low comes back to the community while gaining new ground. jocelyn martinez-rosales...................... 12 centering community by recalling the past

Charlene Carruthers’ The Funnel explores the significance of how housing can shape and change one’s experiences. david zegeye...........................................14 illinois is getting better at answering calls to the suicide crisis line but will the south side be left behind?

The new 988 suicide prevention line shows promise in Illinois, but questions remain. josh mcghee and ola giwa....................15 ‘the evergrowing industry of warehousing men and women’ Melanie Newport’s forthcoming book outlines the racist history of Cook County Jail. bobby vanecko........................................19 the exchange

The Weekly’s poetry corner offers our thoughts in exchange for yours. chima ikoro, c. lofty bolling..............21 calendar

Bulletin and events. south side weekly staff.......................22

ART

The Wizards Premieres at Pilsen’s APO Cultural Center

A Ricardo Gamboa play combines the barrio experience and the supernatural with a hyperlocal cast in the historic community center.

BY JACQUELINE SERRATO

P

laywright Ricardo Gamboa was walking on 18th Street one day when they noticed production equipment at the entrance of a centuryold building and decided to let themselves in—all the way into the basement— where they discovered an underutilized auditorium. That’s how Leticia Guerrero, the building’s steward, recalls meeting Gamboa. At the time, the Asociación por Derechos Obreros (APO) Cultural Center was being used as a holding area for the production crew of the Chicago Fire TV series.

“He goes, ‘Oh, I've always liked the space.’ He had come to some performance we did back in the day,” Guerrero told the Weekly. “He says, ‘I got this play going on.’

So I said, ‘Okay, I’m the person you need to talk to.’” She invited Gamboa to an upcoming board meeting and, upon hearing about The Wizards play and their mutual desire to further activate the multipurpose space, they invited Gamboa to do an artist residency.

APO, at 1438 W. 18th St., was originally built as a Czech Sokol and continued as a community space when the identity of the neighborhood changed to predominantly working-class and Mexican. It was also a labor organizing hub in the 70s, taking on campaigns to fight hiring discrimination against Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in companies like the Greyhound, the U.S. Postal Service, People’s Gas, and Cook County Hospital.

But it hasn’t been easy—or cheap— to upkeep the five-story building.

Shortly after the loss of the Casa Aztlán community center, there was local pressure

PHOTO COURTESY OF RICARDO GAMBOA

on the leadership to make the APO building more welcoming to the public.

However, Guerrero maintains that APO has always been open to the community; the reality is that they’re underresourced and understaffed.

She’s fully invested in keeping APO running, as it’s where her late mother, Raquel Guerrero, once organized, and where her memory is kept alive, she said.

The building has in fact hosted rock concerts, painting classes, workshops, and art shows across the years, and has run an After School Matters program on- and off-site for students for over a decade.

There’s also a legacy of established Pilsen artists who had studio space at APO, including Carlos Cortéz, José Gonzalez, Salvador Vega, Francisco Mendoza, Hector

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Duarte, Robert Valadez, and René Arceo, whose work is in the National Museum of Mexican Art’s permanent collection.

Former 25th ward chief of staff Javier Yañez, who is now APO’s interim executive director on a volunteer basis, confirmed efforts are underway to fundraise and help Guerrero make repairs and revitalize the center.

The production of The Wizards was commissioned by the Goodman Theatre in 2019, where it hosted two staged readings that sold out. The play, starring Gamboa and co-producer and Chicago theater vet Sean James William Parris, is about a queer interracial couple who come across a Ouija board in their old Pilsen apartment. They are subsequently connected to the spirits of four youth who were part of a Mexican-

American Motown cover band from the 70s.

“The play is actually both a response to Trump’s inauguration—that’s when it was written—and then also, it’s derived from the stories of my parents about growing up in Little Village and Pilsen in the 60s and 70s,” Gamboa, who wrote the play, said in an interview with the Weekly. “So stuff like the Vietnam War factors in there, or the police and gang violence that people were growing up [around], as well as the racism, the anti-Mexican racism that was around then… and we look at that and connect it to contemporary questions.”

It’s not the first time that Gamboa combined the barrio experience with the supernatural—or sought out spaces in the hood that are culturally relevant and inviting to local families. In late 2017, they fashioned a storefront in Back of the Yards to look like a Latinx living room for the award-winning play “Meet Juanito Doe,” with monologues by Black and Brown performers who’d lived through those same experiences.

The Wizards cast is also predominantly Black, Brown and hyperlocal. Several cast members call Gamboa a mentor.

Luis Mora, who plays Neto in The Wizards, started doing improv as a hobby in 2014. He was accepted into The Theatre School at DePaul University, but said he initially struggled to find his voice in the white-led institution until he got involved in Gamboa’s plays.

Mora recommends people go see The Wizards because “You will see yourself in it, you will see your brother in it, and you will see your father in it, and even if you haven’t talked or had those conversations

REVIEW

A Guide for the New Era of Abortion

Robin Marty’s The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America explores options for preventing and ending pregnancies, avoiding with your family and friends that you need didn't mean any harm, until I realized, I got to, once you kind of learn to accept yourself more educated, and was like, ‘Okay, man, I digital surveillance, and more.

CAST MEMBERS, PHOTO BY JACKIE SERRATO

and accept your friends, you’ll fucking see yourself and you’ll be like, ‘damn, I wish I could. I hope that can be me one day, you know, just opening up and being myself.’”

Alvaro Padilla plays Javi in <i>The Wizards</i>, and he got involved in theater sort of accidentally when Gamboa was teaching an After School Matters class and invited him in.

Padilla said The Wizards is relatable especially for those who grew up in homophobic environments. “I had a group of four friends growing up myself… and a lot of us made jokes, and a lot of us held things in and I think were very secretive.

But I think there’s a lot of emotion involved. And I think this story paints a lot of that picture for me, it’s so relatable when it comes to people being homosexual, but also being behind closed doors, you know what I mean? Feeling this, like, ‘I can’t come out because I am scared,’” he said.

“I come from an era where ‘gay’ is like a word you… tell your best friend: ‘Hey man, that shit gay as fuck.’ That was something I grew up with, and how I grew up, and I

gotta train myself to talk better.’”

For the duration of rehearsals and the run of The Wizards, the production team is providing cultural programming, including storytelling events like ¡Ay Cucuy! and workshops for Chicago teens.

The play runs from October 14 to November 19 and is primarily in English, with some lines in Spanish. Each performance of The Wizards seats sixty people. There are reservations for each night available through Eventbrite ranging from $20 to $60. Additionally, ten walkup tickets are available each night for a donation or “pay-what-you-can.”

A percentage of the proceeds will go to APO to help offset the cost of maintaining the building, Gamboa said.

The Wizards is also produced in conjunction with the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the 5th Annual Destinos Chicago International Latino Theater Festival. Jacqueline Serrato is the Weekly’s editor-inchief.

“You will see yourself in it, you will see your brother in it, and you will see your father in it, and even if you haven’t talked or had those conversations with your family and friends that you need to… you’ll fucking see yourself and you’ll be like, ‘damn, I wish I could. I hope that can be me one day, you know, just opening up and being myself.’” –Alvaro Padilla

BY ELLA BEISER

I

n the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the constitutional right to abortion, the five states bordering Illinois banned and restricted abortion to varying degrees.

Current access ranges from legal but restricted in Iowa, to legal but severely restricted in Wisconsin and Indiana, to illegal in Missouri and Kentucky. Illinois is an outlier in the Midwest, providing a “beacon of hope,” as Governor J.B. Pritzker put it, in a region that is largely anti-choice. In the past few years, Illinois legislators have passed multiple reproductive-health-expanding bills, such as the 2019 Reproductive Health Act, which established abortion as a fundamental right in Illinois. And, in early June, Pritzker approved the repealing of the Parental Notice of Abortion Act for minors, which had required parental notification before an abortion. After Dobbs, Illinois saw an influx of patients seeking abortion from nearby states; in June, for example, Illinois Planned Parenthoods provided 800 abortions to out-of-state patients, up from 100 the month before.

But despite seeming like an oasis at the moment, Illinois may not be safe forever—South Carolina’s Republican

Senator Lindsey Graham introduced a bill a few weeks ago for a nationwide ban on abortion after fifteen weeks, which could go up for a vote if Republicans take control of Congress in the midterms. For those looking to support people seeking abortions and reproductive care, Robin Marty’s The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America provides a thorough guide for an increasingly abortion-restrictive country.

Though written before the Dobbs decision, Marty had the foresight that Roe would fall, and provides a guidebook for preventing pregnancy, ending pregnancy, advocating for reproductive rights and maintaining your privacy in an uncertain era.

This book isn’t intended to be read cover-to-cover, but rather to be used as a hands-on resource to inform the reader and guide them to services they need.

Each chapter centers on a broad topic and ends with a worksheet to assist the reader in acting on what they’ve learned.

The book starts with the history of the reproductive access movement and then turns to preventing and ending pregnancy for yourself. Marty spends some time making sure readers understand the menstrual cycle, as it is essential to managing fertility and navigating abortion laws. Most people

OCTOBER 20, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

REVIEW have a twenty-eight day menstrual cycle, with day one being the first day of menstruation, when the uterus sheds its lining and results in cramping and bleeding. Ovulation typically begins around day fourteen and is when the person is at their most fertile. Sperm can survive in a uterus for up to five days and, “if live sperm is present either when the egg is released or within twentyfour hours of ovulation, fertilization will happen and the newly fertilized egg will begin to travel to the uterus and embed into the lining, a process that takes anywhere from seven to ten days.” If fertilization does not occur, the egg and the uterine lining will shed a few days later at the start of menstruation.

This knowledge is especially important in calculating the age of a pregnancy, since restrictive anti-abortion laws often institute the ban at a specific number of weeks. One method is gestational age, which is measured from the last menstrual cycle; another is postfertilization age, which is measured from when the egg was likely fertilized around day fourteen, and so comes out to two weeks less than gestational age. Laws banning abortion at twenty weeks, for example, use post-fertilization age, but by the gestational age measure, which is more commonly used in medical settings, it would come out to twenty-two weeks.

Marty describes and explains a number of pregnancy prevention options, including proactive measures like birth control pills and condoms, as well as reactive methods like Emergency Contraception (EC). Birth control pills are commonly used and 91% effective at preventing pregnancy, but there can be barriers to their use, such as cost, access to doctors for a prescription, and transportation to the pharmacy. Condoms are 85% effective at preventing pregnancy and can prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections. Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives (LARCs) like an IUD or a copper implant are 99% effective since there is no room for human error—however, they can be expensive out of pocket and require a medical professional to insert and remove. The most effective birth control method is sterilization via permanent surgical

procedures like tubal sterilizations for people with ovaries and vasectomies for people with testicles.

Emergency contraception (EC) is commonly used when a person believes they may become pregnant following intercourse. A copper IUD is the most effective form of EC and will protect against pregnancy up to five days after intercourse, but it must be inserted by a medical professional. EC pills such as Plan B One Step, Next Choice One Dose, and AfterPill all work up to five days post intercourse, and are most effective within the first seventy-two hours. EC pills are available at pharmacies regardless of gender or age and without ID. For people looking for EC, afterpill.com has options delivered by mail.

The coat hanger has become a symbol of a post-Roe world and references one of the many dangerous methods pregnant people used to induce an abortion prior to the passage of Roe. While the coat hangers acted as a graphic and effective reminder of the past, Marty reminds us that pregnant people have far more options when terminating a pregnancy than they did fifty years ago.

Many abortions can be done safetly at home using medications like Mifepristone, which have been legal in the US since 2000. Medication abortions conducted independently of a medical provider have been shown to be safe and effective for first and second trimester abortions. Taking Misoprostol alone is 80–85% effective for pregnancies before twelve weeks and Mifepristone combined with Misoprostol is 95–98% effective before ten weeks—taken later in the pregnancy, stronger bleeding or cramps become more common. Mifepristone blocks progesterone receptors,terminating the pregnancy, and Misoprostol induces contractions and should be taken after Mifepristone. Most abortion clinics can provide information about accessing abortion-inducing medications. In a number of states, including Illinois, you may qualify for medication by mail by visiting teleabortion.net.

If a pregnant person decides to pursue an abortion within a clinical setting, Marty warns caution when selecting a clinic. Across the United

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States, anti-abortion activists have set up Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), clinics that claim to be “full-scale, fullservice reproductive health clinics,” but in reality do not provide abortion or accurate information. Despite Chicago’s progressive policies regarding abortion access, Reproaction Education Fund lists 110 CPCs in Illinois and eight in the Chicago area, including Aid for Women Inc. in Back of the Yards and Lawndale Christian Health Center in North Lawndale.

Marty also warns readers about manipulative language that anti-abortion activists use when talking about abortion.

For instance, abortion activists often claim fetuses feel pain, and while it’s well documented that the receptors needed to feel pain develop by twenty weeks gestation, it’s not until near the third trimester that the fetus’ nervous system is able to transmit the pain to the fetus’ brain. They also use terms like “born alive”, “viability” and “infantacide” to garner sympathy for their cause. The use of these terms is misleading because while fetuses may be born “alive” prior to twenty-two weeks’ gestation, their lungs “lack the surfactant necessary for them to inflate and deflate without tears or collapse,” making survival impossible.

Despite reproductive health care rights being codified into law in Illinois, Marty emphasizes that since it is no longer a constitutional right, remaining vigilant during elections is essential, especially during local elections. In Arizona, the midterm race for Governor will determine the state’s access to abortion after the Arizona Supreme Court banned nearly all abortions. Gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs has promised to repeal the abortion ban if elected whereas candidate Kari Lake is strongly “pro-life.”

Volunteering at abortion clinics as an escort or assisting pregnant people as an abortion doula are other ways to directly assist pregnant people. Frequenting businesses near the clinic as well as those that work with the clinic is another way to support clinics as intimidating abortion clinic vendors is a common tactic used by abortion opponents. Marty stresses the importance of centering abortion movements created and led by Black

people, Indigenous people, and people of color (BIPOC) and not replicating efforts. “We must deliberately and purposefully bring antiracism into every action we take. That means centering BIPOC in every level of activism and stepping back our support of whiteled organizations that ignore—or even worse outright appropriate—the cause of reproductive justice as their own.” This is essential so that reproductive services are accessible and inclusive to everyone, not just cisgender white women.

In order to safely access abortion services and help others do so, it may be important to avoid surveillance and not leave a digital trail. Marty suggests purchasing a burner phone if possible or choosing one device to research and plan on. Additionally, avoiding open phone lines and instead opting for encrypted texting apps like WhatsApp, Signal and Jitsi will ensure phone records can’t be subpoenaed during a trial. Practicing digital safety by using strong passwords, enabling two-factor authentication and clearing your search history are also in general good ideas. Marty warns that if a legal investigation occurs after a miscarriage, prosecutors may use visits to an abortion clinic website or texts expressing uncertainty about the pregnancy as evidence. In August, for example, Nebraska prosecutors charged a mother for helping her daughter perform an abortion after subpeoning their Facebook messages, which showed the two had discussed using abortion medication.

This book is informative and straightforward. It talks plainly about the state of reproductive rights in America and tells truths that just months ago many would’ve found pessimistic. But the author was correct to predict the downfall of Roe and The New Handbook for a PostRoe America is a practical book to help people make their own decisions and take bold actions. Ella Beiser is a lifelong Hyde Parker and is currently a sophomore at Bates College studying politics and digital and computational studies. In her free time she enjoys writing for her school newspaper and sharing music with friends.

POLITICS

Workers are on the Ballot November 8 A proposed amendment to the state constitution will codify legal protections for unions and prevent right-to-work laws.

BY SKY PATTERSON

E

lection Day in Illinois, November 8, is right around the corner.

Whether voting by mail or showing up to the polls in person, the first item on the ballot will ask voters to decide “yes” or “no” on a change to the Illinois Constitution. Amendment 1, also called the Workers’ Right Amendment (WRA), would enshrine the right to unionize and collectively bargain in the state constitution and prevent the passage of right-to-work laws in the future.

At the federal level, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935 protects most private sector workers’ rights to form unions, but excludes railroad, agricultural, and government workers, letting states decide labor law in those sectors.

While the NLRA neither prohibits nor protects government workers from organizing, Illinois passed two laws in 1984—the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act and the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act—that explicitly added those protections for public employees such as first responders, sanitation workers, and teachers. Between these acts and the NLRA, most people in Illinois already have the right to form unions, meaning the right to negotiate wages, hours, and working conditions with their employers as a collective, without the fear of retaliation.

If passed, the WRA would solidify those rights in the state constitution, adding additional legal protections. If the NLRA were ever repealed at the federal level, private sector workers in Illinois would retain their right to unionize—and for state legislators to ever attack labor rights, the Illinois constitution itself would need to be amended again.

“Workers need as many channels of support [as possible] during these times,” said Jose Requena, a Chicago Public Schools special education classroom assistant at Edwards Elementary School

and SEIU Local 73 member. “Having unions that have the law on their side helps workers everywhere work in safer and healthier environments.”

Experts don’t agree on whether the WRA will extend the right to unionize to workers currently without that right, such as agricultural workers. Democratic State Senator Ram Villivalam, one of the amendment sponsors, said that the WRA would mainly add a layer of protection for public employees who already had collective bargaining rights. But Joe Bowen, a spokesperson for Vote Yes for Workers Rights, a political group in favor of the amendment, has said the WRA would grant “hundreds of thousands” of Illinois workers the right to unionize.

Marc Poulos, executive director of the Indiana, Illinois & Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting, a labor management organization, said the amendment is intentionally vague about which private sector employees will be affected.

Poulos said the ambiguity will ensure the amendment can be responsive to unpredictable future attacks on workers rights, like if Congress were to curtail the NLRA. If the amendment passes, the details will likely be decided in the courts.

The WRA also prevents the future passage of right-to-work laws in Illinois.

Right-to-work laws can be traced back to the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947—enacted after a series of massive labor strikes— which weakened the NLRA by allowing states to pass laws that let employees benefit from unions without requiring them to join or pay dues.

Right-to-work laws, which exist in twenty-seven states, make it more difficult for workers to unionize and win organizing fights. The more members a union has, the more bargaining power it has to win things like better working conditions or compensation. And union budgets, drawn from members’ dues, fund things like

arbitration, strike support, union staff to negotiate on behalf of workers, trainings, and other operations.

Right-to-work laws make union membership and dues optional, leading to fewer members and smaller budgets, curtailing the unions’ power to improve pay, hours, and working conditions for all workers.

Three other states—Hawaii, Missouri, and New York—protect the right to unionize in their constitutions, but by passing the WRA, Illinois would become the first state to ban right-to-work laws.

Philip Montoro, music editor for the Chicago Reader and chair of the paper’s editorial union, strongly supports the WRA and especially likes that it would prevent “boss-friendly” right-to-work laws in Illinois. “When capital is given the option, it will always seek the market where it can exploit labor most ruthlessly, which kicks off a race to the bottom that hurts everyone but the owners. I’d be happy to see that option taken away,” he said.

The Reader’s union, which is part of TNG-CWA Local 34071 (The News Guild-Communication Workers of America), played a major role in saving the paper from financial ruin this year.

When former owner Len Goodman tried to prevent the paper from transitioning to a nonprofit, which threatened bankruptcy, the union and its supporters fought back publicly and pressured Goodman to step down from the board.

Since the Chicago Reader is a nonprofit, it can require that all editorial staff be in the union and pay dues.

Besides helping the Reader transition to a nonprofit, Montoro says the union has secured higher compensation, clearer job descriptions, and better work-life balance.

Technically, every state is a right-towork state for public sector employees. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v.

AFSCME that public sector workers do not

have to join their workplace union or pay dues—and the WRA cannot change that.

The amendment can only prevent right-towork laws that affect the private sector.

But even that could be an important win for workers. Alec Hudson, a special recreation instructor for the Chicago Park District and member of SEIU Local 73, thinks the WRA could safeguard new organizing efforts by removing the worry that right-to-work laws will pass in the future. “It will protect the ability of workers all over the state to form unions and collectively bargain with employers, and I think it will help secure and expand organizing successes we have seen at Starbucks and Amazon,” he said.

And while the WRA won’t require workers in the Park District to join his union or pay dues, he believes it is vital that all Park District workers get involved with the union, not only to win a better contract, but also “to help raise the expectations of city workers all over Chicago.”

Chicago, like other places across the country, has seen a wave of unionization and strikes. The city is home to six of the nearly 250 Starbucks coffee shops that voted to unionize over the past year, including one in Hyde Park. Amazon workers in Gage Park and Cicero walked off the job just days before Christmas of last year to demand better pay and safer working conditions.

For healthcare workers at Howard Brown Health (HBH), an LGBTQaffirming health care organization, a union contract was the gateway to better working conditions and patient service.

Nurses unionized in 2019 and were represented by the Illinois Nurses Union (INA), which has since expanded the Howard Brown Health Workers United to include all non-nurse employees across all its clinics, three Brown Elephant stores, and the Broadway Youth Center.

Employees organized in response to

OCTOBER 20, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

POLITICS

Los trabajadores ejercerán su voto el 8 de noviembre Los miembros del sindicato se preparan para votar “sí” a la primera enmienda de la Constitución de Illinois POR SKY PATTERSON TRADUCIDO POR FRANCISCO RAMÍREZ PINEDO

ILLUSTRATION BY JULIE MERRELL

chronic understaffing, high staff turnover, insufficient pay, and other poor working conditions. Shaddiyyah Daniels-Miller, a patient service representative at HBH’s 55th Street location in Hyde Park, says her coworkers are more willing to express concerns and grievances are being taken seriously since unionization.

In September, after four months of negotiations, HBH nurses were preparing to strike when the INA reached a tentative agreement with management.

The nurses won their second contract, securing a 5.5% pay increase, $1,500 yearly retention bonuses, unprecedented staffing minimums, and improved health and safety conditions.

“Everyone at Howard Brown Health is fighting to improve patient care. The high turnover and low pay prevent patients from receiving consistent care…They’re fighting for Howard Brown to actually live up to its mission,” said Margo Gislain, lead organizer for INA’s Howard Brown Health units. She said the WRA would give workers the protections they need to keep fighting. “Having union protections in the Illinois constitution would prevent attacks on union member rights and would allow labor to go on the offensive for the first time in decades,” she added.

The WRA could be the first step of many to raise union density and strengthen worker protections across the state. While Hudson is excited by the amendment, he

cautioned that the WRA alone cannot end attacks on organized labor, create more rank-and-file-run democratic locals, or push back against political leaders who scapegoat teachers and public sector workers. He believes “only a militant mass movement of working people can do those things, but this amendment is a step towards securing that movement.”

The text of the amendment is included below. To amend the constitution, the WRA will need “yes” votes from 60% of those voting on the amendment or a simple majority of all ballots cast. Employees shall have the fundamental right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing for the purpose of negotiating wages, hours, and working conditions, and to protect their economic welfare and safety at work.

No law shall be passed that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively over their wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment and workplace safety, including any law or ordinance that prohibits the execution or application of agreements between employers and labor organizations that represent employees requiring membership in an organization as a condition of employment.

Sky Patterson is the Weekly’s Director of Factchecking. This is their first story for the Weekly.

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 20, 2022

E

l día de las elecciones en Illinois es el 8 de noviembre. Tanto si vota por correo o si acude a las urnas en persona, el primer punto de la papeleta le pedirá que vote “sí” o “no” a un cambio en la Constitución de Illinois.

La primera enmienda, también conocida cómo la Enmienda de Derechos de los Trabajadores (WRA, por sus siglas en inglés), incluiría el poder de sindicarse y de negociar colectivamente y también evitaría la aprobación de leyes que permiten a los trabajadores elegir si quieren afiliarse a un sindicato o no, conocidas como, “right to work laws,” o RTW. A nivel nacional, La Ley Nacional de Relaciones Laborales (NLRA, por sus siglas en inglés) de 1935 protege el derecho de la mayoría de los trabajadores del sector privado a formar sindicatos, pero excluye a los trabajadores ferroviarios, agrícolas y gubernamentales, dejando que los estados decidan la legislación laboral en esos sectores.

Aunque la NLRA no prohíbe ni protege a los trabajadores gubernamentales de organizarse, Illinois aprobó leyes en 1984, la Ley de Relaciones Laborales Públicas de Illinois y la Ley de Relaciones Laborales Educativas de Illinois, que añadieron explícitamente esas protecciones para los empleados públicos, como los socorristas, los trabajadores de los servicios sanitarios y los maestros. Entre estas leyes

y la NLRA, la mayoría de los habitantes de Illinois ya tienen el derecho a formar sindicatos, es decir, el derecho a negociar los salarios, las horas y las condiciones de trabajo con sus empleadores como grupo, sin temor a represalias.

Para las clases de trabajadores que ya tienen derecho a sindicarse, la WRA consolidaría esos derechos en la constitución estatal, añadiendo una capa adicional de protección. Si alguna vez se derogara la NLRA a nivel federal, los trabajadores del sector privado de Illinois conservarían su derecho a sindicarse; y para que los legisladores estatales pudieran atacar alguna vez los derechos laborales, habría que volver a modificar la propia constitución.

“Los trabajadores necesitan el mayor número de canales de apoyo durante estos tiempos”, dijo José Requena, un asistente de educación especial de las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago (CPS, por sus siglas en inglés) en la Escuela Primaria Edwards y miembro del sindicato SEIU Local 73.

“Tener sindicatos que tienen la ley a su favor ayuda a los trabajadores de todo el mundo a trabajar en entornos más seguros y saludables”.

Los expertos no están de acuerdo si la WRA ampliará el derecho a sindicarse sin temor a represalias a los trabajadores que no tienen ese derecho actualmente, como los trabajadores agrícolas. El senador estatal demócrata Ram Villivalam, uno de los

POLÍTICA patrocinadores de la enmienda, dijo que la WRA añadiría principalmente una capa de protección para los empleados públicos que ya tenían derechos de negociación colectiva.

Sin embargo, Joe Bowen, portavoz de Vote Yes for Workers Rights, un grupo político a favor de la enmienda, ha dicho que la WRA concedería a “cientos de miles” de trabajadores de Illinois el derecho a sindicarse.

Marc Poulos, director ejecutivo de Indiana, Illinois, Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting (III FFC, por sus siglas en inglés) una organización de gestión laboral, dijo que la enmienda es intencionalmente vaga en cuanto a qué empleados del sector privado se verán afectados. Poulos dijo que la ambigüedad garantizará que la enmienda pueda responder a futuros ataques imprevisibles contra los derechos de los trabajadores, como si el Congreso fuera a restringir a la NLRA. Si la enmienda se aprueba, los detalles se decidirán probablemente en los tribunales.

La WRA también impide la futura aprobación de leyes RTW que permiten a los trabajadores elegir si quieren afiliarse a un sindicato o no. Estas leyes provienen de la Ley Taft-Hartley de 1947- promulgada tras una serie de huelgas laborales masivas, que debilitó la NLRA al permitir a los estados aprobar leyes que permiten a los trabajadores beneficiarse de los sindicatos sin exigirles que se afilien o paguen cuotas.

Estas leyes existen en veintisiete estados, dificultan que los trabajadores se sindicalicen y ganen las luchas organizativas.

Cuantos más afiliados tiene un sindicato, más poder de negociación tiene para conseguir mejores condiciones de trabajo o compensaciones. Y los presupuestos de los sindicatos, procedentes de las cuotas de los afiliados, financian el arbitraje, el apoyo a las huelgas, el personal del sindicato para negociar en nombre de los trabajadores, entrenamientos, y otras operaciones.

También, estas leyes hacen que la afiliación y las cuotas sindicales sean opcionales, lo que conduce a un menor número de miembros y a presupuestos más pequeños, reduciendo el poder de los sindicatos para mejorar los salarios, los horarios y las condiciones laborales de todos los trabajadores.

Otros tres estados como Hawaii, Missouri y Nueva York protegen el derecho de sindicarse en sus constituciones, pero al aprobar la WRA, Illinois se convertiría en el primer estado en prohibir las leyes RTW.

Philip Montoro, editor de música del periódico Chicago Reader y presidente del sindicato editorial, apoya firmemente a la WRA y le gusta especialmente porque impide las leyes que son favorables a los empleadores en Illinois. “Cuando el capital tiene la opción, siempre buscará el mercado en el que pueda explotar el trabajo de forma más despiadada, lo que inicia una carrera hacia el fondo que perjudica a todos menos a los dueños. Me alegraría que se eliminara esa opción”, dijo.

El sindicato del Chicago Reader, que forma parte del sindicato TNG-CWA Local 34071 (The News Guild-Communication Workers of America), desempeñó un papel importante para salvar al periódico de la ruina financiera este año. Cuando el propietario anterior, Len Goodman, trató de impedir que el periódico se convirtiera en una organización sin fines de lucro, lo que amenazaba con la quiebra, el sindicato y sus partidarios se defendieron públicamente y presionaron a Goodman para que abandonara el consejo de administración.

Dado que el Chicago Reader es una organización sin fines de lucro, puede exigir que todo el personal de la redacción esté afiliado al sindicato y pague las cuotas.

Además de ayudar a que el periódico se convirtiera en una organización sin fines de lucro, Montoro afirma que el sindicato también ha conseguido una mayor remuneración, una descripción más clara de los puestos de trabajo y una mejor conciliación de la vida laboral y familiar.

Técnicamente, todos los estados tienen leyes que permiten a los trabajadores elegir si quieren afiliarse a un sindicato en el sector público. En 2018, la Corte Suprema decidió en el caso, Janus v. AFSCME que los trabajadores del sector público no pueden afiliarse a sus sindicatos en el lugar de trabajo ni pagar cuotas y la WRA no puede cambiar eso. La enmienda sólo puede impedir estas leyes en el sector privado.

Pero incluso eso podría ser una victoria importante para los trabajadores. Alec Hudson, un instructor de recreación especial para el Distrito de Parques de Chicago y miembro del sindicato, Local 73 de SEIU, piensa que la WRA podría proteger los nuevos esfuerzos de organización sindical al eliminar la preocupación de que las leyes RTW se aprueben en el futuro. “Protegerá la capacidad de los trabajadores de todo el estado para formar sindicatos y negociar colectivamente con los empleadores, y creo que ayudará a asegurar y ampliar los

éxitos de organización que hemos visto en Starbucks y Amazon”, dijo.

Y aunque la WRA no exigirá a los trabajadores del Distrito de Parques que se afilien a su sindicato o paguen cuotas, cree que es vital que todos los trabajadores del Distrito de Parques se involucren con el sindicato, no sólo para conseguir un mejor contrato, sino también “para ayudar a elevar las expectativas de los trabajadores de la ciudad en todo Chicago.”

En Chicago, como en otros lugares del país, se ha producido una oleada de sindicalización y huelgas. La ciudad alberga seis de las más de 200 cafeterías Starbucks que votaron a favor de la sindicalización el año pasado, incluida una en Hyde Park.

Los trabajadores de Amazon en Gage Park y Cicero abandonaron el trabajo pocos días antes de la Navidad del año pasado para exigir mejores salarios y condiciones de trabajo más seguras.

Para los trabajadores de la salud de Howard Brown Health, un centro de servicios sociales y de salud LGBTQ sin fines de lucro, un contrato sindical fue la puerta de entrada a mejores condiciones de trabajo y servicio al paciente. Las enfermeras se sindicalizaron en 2019 y fueron representadas por el Sindicato de Enfermeras de Illinois, (INA, por sus siglas en inglés), que desde entonces ha ampliado el Sindicato de Trabajadores de Howard Brown Health para incluir a todos los empleados que no son enfermeras en todas sus clínicas, tres tiendas Brown Elephant y el centro juvenil, Broadway Youth Center. Los empleados se organizaron en respuesta a la escasez crónica de personal, la alta rotación de personal, la insuficiencia salarial y otras malas condiciones de trabajo.

Shaddiyyah Daniels-Miller, representante de servicios al paciente en el centro de Howard Brown Health en Hyde Park, dice que sus compañeros de trabajo están más dispuestos a expresar sus preocupaciones y que sus quejas se toman ahora en serio desde que se sindicalizaron.

En septiembre, tras cuatro meses de negociaciones, las enfermeras del HBH se preparaban para la huelga cuando la INA llegó a un acuerdo provisional con la dirección. Las enfermeras consiguieron su segundo contrato, asegurando un aumento salarial del 5.5%, primas de retención de 1,500 dólares anuales, mínimos de personal sin precedentes y mejores condiciones de salud y seguridad.

“Todo el mundo en Howard Brown Health está luchando por mejorar la

atención a los pacientes. La alta rotación de personal y los bajos salarios impiden que los pacientes reciban una atención consistente…. Están luchando para que Howard Brown esté realmente a la altura de su misión”, dijo Margo Gislain, organizadora principal de las unidades de Howard Brown Health de INA. Dijo que la WRA daría a los trabajadores las protecciones que necesitan para seguir luchando. “Tener protecciones sindicales en la constitución de Illinois evitaría ataques a los derechos de los miembros del sindicato y permitiría a los trabajadores pasar a la ofensiva por primera vez en décadas”, añadió.

La WRA podría ser el primer paso de muchos para aumentar la densidad del sindicato y fortalecer las protecciones de los trabajadores en todo el estado. Aunque Hudson está entusiasmado con la enmienda, advirtió que la WRA por sí sola no puede poner fin a los ataques contra el trabajo organizado, crear más locales democráticos dirigidos por sus miembros , o hacer frente a los líderes políticos que convierten a los maestros y a los trabajadores del sector público en chivos expiatorios. Cree que “sólo un movimiento militante de masas de trabajadores puede hacer esas cosas, pero esta enmienda es un paso para asegurar ese movimiento”.

El texto de la enmienda se incluye a continuación. Para enmendar la constitución de Illinois, la WRA necesitará el “si” del 60% de los votantes de la enmienda o una mayoría simple de todos los votos emitidos. Los trabajadores tendrán el derecho fundamental de organizarse y negociar colectivamente a través de representantes de su elección con el fin de negociar los salarios, las horas y condiciones de trabajo, y para proteger su bienestar económico y su seguridad en el trabajo. No se aprobará ninguna ley que interfiera, niegue o disminuya el derecho de los empleados a organizarse y negociar colectivamente sus salarios, horarios y otros términos y condiciones de empleo y seguridad en el lugar de trabajo, incluyendo cualquier ley u ordenanza que prohíba la ejecución o aplicación de acuerdos entre empleadores y organizaciones laborales que representen a los empleados que requieran la afiliación a una organización como condición de empleo.

Sky Patterson es directore de verificación de información del Weekly. Esta es su primera nota.

OCTOBER 20, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

REVIEW

Turning Point A review of Punch 9's sweeping look at Harold Washington’s life and legacy.

BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER This review was originally published on October 22, 2021 in the Hyde Park Herald.

Reprinted with permission.

A

t the beginning of “Punch 9 for Harold Washington,” a television interviewer asks the former mayor what he would like a future historian to write about his administration.

“He’d probably say, ‘That was a turning point—that was a turning point,’” Washington responds.

“Punch 9,” a documentary covering Harold Washington’s time as mayor from 1983 to 1987, takes this idea seriously, examining a brief and near-revolutionary interlude in Chicago with an eye sharply attuned to its historic nature—both the awareness of the people living through it that they were making history and their reflections, thirty-plus years after the fact, on the hard-fought triumph and melancholy aftermath of Washington’s short reign.

Washington and the documentary’s director, Joe Winston, both have deep connections to Hyde Park: The mayor lived in the neighborhood during his time in office, while Winston grew up here and attended Kenwood Academy. Winston’s previous work includes a documentary adaptation of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”, the 2004 best-seller by Thomas Frank—another former Hyde Parker— examining the groundswell of populist conservatism in the American heartland.

Political journalism is not new territory for Winston, then, and “Punch 9”—screening at select Chicago theaters through Thursday—deftly sets up its stakes at the beginning. Into the mid70s, Chicago is governed by Mayor Richard J. Daley, who presides over a vast and tentacular patronage system that privileges white ethnics and neglects Black

neighborhoods. “The trains ran on time, but the schools were still segregated,” runs one commentator’s description.

Daley’s sudden death in 1976 creates a power vacuum. Fellow Bridgeporter Michael Bilandic takes over, but not after a turbulent interlude during which Ald. Wilson Frost, the Black president pro tem of City Council, tries to declare himself acting mayor. Washington, then an Illinois state senator, observes that Frost would have become mayor if he were white.

During the terms of the next two mayors—the hapless Bilandic, undone by a forty-hour blizzard, and Jane Byrne, depicted in the movie as someone who betrayed the Black voters who delivered her into office—Black activists and politicians begin looking around for someone to run for the office. They settle on Washington, who had attempted an unsuccessful primary campaign against Bilandic in 1977 and was elected to the U.S. House in 1980.

Reluctant to give up his D.C. sinecure, he asks for 50,000 new registered voters; with the help of Black activists like Timuel Black, who passed away on October 13, 2021, that number is easily surpassed. (In a moment the film, to its credit, doesn’t play up, Washington also says of the mayoral post that “it might kill you but, boy, you’d sure look good sitting in the saddle.”)

The archival footage of Washington on the campaign trail and in press conferences makes for the film’s most compelling moments. It’s like bearing witness to a force of nature—not just for the power of his easy charisma and eloquence, but for how inevitable he makes his own ascent appear. He mocks Byrne charmingly during a primary debate; he’s seen kidding around with a young boy at a campaign rally. “Reporters have to carry around their dictionaries to figure out what he’s saying,”

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 20, 2022

recalls Hyde Parker Jacky Grimshaw, just before we see Washington call federal housing codes “antediluvian.”

The documentary is crafted almost wholly out of archival footage and contemporaneous interviews with notables like David Axelrod, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Valerie Jarrett. It makes for an immersive experience—watching grainy news reels, I felt lifted back in time to a city both familiar and a little strange, with its older cars, frumpier fashions and more overt racism.

When I spoke with Winston in 2019 while he was fundraising for the documentary, he said that he was worried that Chicagoans were beginning to forget some of the realities of Washington’s time.

“Harold Washington, if we do nothing, is in danger of becoming just sort of an icon, a Santa Claus,” he said. “Like a simplified figure that people can evoke when it’s convenient, without taking into account who he was or what he did.”

Taking its cue from this concern, “Punch 9” focuses much of its attention

on the harsh realities of racial politics and the implacable opposition of white politicians and residents to Washington’s campaign and subsequent mayoralty.

Bernard Epton, Washington’s Republican opponent in the 1983 general election and a state representative from Hyde Park, used the campaign slogan “Epton for Mayor… before it’s too late”—hardly a subtle nudge to white ethnic enclaves in the city. (One of the film’s most interesting interviews comes with Epton’s guiltridden, lachrymal son, who compares his father’s campaigns events to Nazi rallies at Nuremberg.)

Even after Washington’s narrow victory over Epton, his time in office is difficult, to put it mildly. He is obstructed at every turn in City Council by a bloc of twenty-nine aldermen, all but one of them white, led by Eddie Vrdolyak and Ed Burke.

Vrdolyak, on the night of the election, had reportedly told the precinct captains under his command that “It’s a racial thing… don’t kid yourself. I’m calling on

you to save your city… We’re fighting to keep the city the way it is.” While neither he nor Burke were interviewed for the film, the assurances from then-allies like Dick Mell that the issue was more about power than race ring hollow.

Washington is able to work around this deadlock at times, implementing the anti-machine Shakman decrees and instituting affirmative action in City hiring.

(The reality of Washington’s relationship to the patronage system is perhaps a little more complicated than we’re led to believe, as the political scientist Anne Freedman showed in a paper written shortly after his death.) He is also able to move funding toward a more equitable, neighborhoodfirst model.

City Council does eventually flip in his favor and he wins a second term, but Washington never really gets a chance to enact his full agenda: On November 25, 1987, he slumps over at his desk during a discussion with his press secretary; he is pronounced dead of a heart attack that afternoon. “Punch 9” shows us the scenes from a prayer vigil downtown, where hundreds of people gather and begin to grieve after the news of his death is announced.

Part of the tragedy of Washington’s untimely passing, the documentary suggests, is what came after—an unraveling of anti-patronage measures and the re-marginalization of the South and West sides, as Richard M. Daley assumed the city’s mayorship in 1989 and proceeded to hold it for a record-setting 22 years. It is difficult to reconcile any of this with the determination and joy of the ascent; watching it, a gloom begins to set in.

At the end of the film, we are shown present-day footage of Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police protestors from the last several years, alongside an excerpt

of Lori Lightfoot’s 2019 victory speech on the night she became the third Black mayor of Chicago: “One day, you will stand on my shoulders, as I stand on the shoulders of so many...the shoulders of political giants, like the late, great Harold Washington.”

This is a strange juxtaposition—are these meant to represent two hopeful aspects of Washington’s legacy? If so, we should admit that they are in tension; many of the participants in the recent social movements are deeply suspicious of electoral politics, and Lightfoot herself criticized protesters on multiple occasions last summer. But the film seems reluctant to acknowledge this, and the coda feels more like a half-hearted stab at hopefulness than a reflection on our continuities and breaks with the past.

If we return to Washington’s words at the beginning of the film—that his administration represented a “turning point”—we might take them as a fact, and search our present, often in vain, for the progress he promised. But we might also hear them as a wish, unfulfilled through no fault of Washington’s own. Then the film becomes something deeper and sadder, an archival examination of a city swept up in a movement that promised radical change, and watched with the knowledge that much of that change failed to materialize.

By showing us history in vivid detail, “Punch 9” inhabits the spirit of a time whose promise still haunts us.Visit punch9movie.com for more information and showtimes.

Christian Belanger graduated from the University of Chicago in 2017. He has previously written for South Side Weekly, Chicago magazine and the Chicago Reader.

Part of the tragedy of Washington’s untimely passing, the documentary suggests, is what came after—an unraveling of anti-patronage measures and the re-marginalization of the South and West sides, as Richard M. Daley assumed the city’s mayorship in 1989.

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OCTOBER 20, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

EVENTS

Lowriders Take Over the Pier Slow & Low makes a return while gaining new ground.

BY JOCELYN MARTINEZ-ROSALES

A

fter a three-year hiatus, Slow & Low, Chicago’s lowrider festival, opened its doors once more this past Saturday—but for the first time ever, the show took place at Navy Pier.

Lowrider culture, a subculture rooted in the Mexican-American/ Chicano experience, revolves around cars, motorcycles and bikes customized with mechanical modifications and elaborate airbrush decals. Over the years, it has transcended borders and barriers: Slow & Low’s takeover of the Pier drew in more than 8,000 people, with some flying or driving in from as far away as Texas, Florida and California.

For many attendees, it isn’t just a car show, but a celebration of culture and identity. In years past, the fashion, artwork, and tattoo styles derived from lowrider culture have been stigmatized and criminalized. But at Slow & Low, they’re a point of pride.

Even in a new location, the festival held true to its iconic atmosphere, with cumbia vibrating from the walls, dozens of vendors, a photography installation at the Pier’s Wave wall, performances by notable DJs and local talents like Lester Rey and Codigo Verde, Aztec dancers performing for crowds, and—of course— hundreds of lowriders and lowrider bikes.

“For the past five years, Navy Pier has been reaching out to me and sort of courting us,” said Lauren M. Pacheco, cofounder and producer of Slow & Low. To keep the festival connected to its roots in Pilsen and its community, Pachecho said, it was vital to feel as though Slow & Low was taking over—so that “for one day it is our space.”

Slow & Low was first held in 2011 near the intersection of Cermak Road and Halsted Street. That year, the festival had around fifty exhibitors and 500 attendees; it continued to be held outdoors in Pilsen for the next few years, and it soon began to outgrow the space. In 2018, Slow & Low hosted its biggest festival to date, bringing in more than 15,000 visitors and over 300 exhibitors.

Part of Slow & Low’s continued success was the ability for the community to just show up—which needed to be replicated when the festival left Pilsen.

Organizers put accessibility front and center by providing hourly shuttle buses between the Pilsen 18th Street Pink Line stop and the Pier.

“It was really important for us, in our negotiations with Navy Pier, to really make sure that the admission ticket price was low,” said Pacheco. They also made sure that parking was accessible by coordinating public lots in nearby garages.

“We really just understood their vision, we understood that they have to have creative control,” said Miguel Alfaro, Arts, Culture and Engagement Program Manager at Navy Pier and manager for local band Codigo Verde.

“From the design, to all the art curation, performances, they really touched every little part of it.”

Car clubs from across the city showed up—and for some, the festival was the first opportunity to show off their ride.

“It’s been roughly a five-year process, and there’s been a lot of work put into it. I’m probably roughly around $50,000 into it,” said El Mexicano, who is part of

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 20, 2022

Spectators enjoyed the variety of exhibitors who each made their displays uniquely theirs.

PHOTOS BY STEVEN ANTHONY GARCIA

the Sicklife Crew in Chicago. He posed shirtless in front of his 1964 four-door orange Chevy Impala, showing off a tattooed torso from the neck down.

“He’s an award winning artist. I’m an award winning canvas,” said El Mexicano, pointing out his favorite tattoo, an image of the Virgen de Guadalupe across his chest. He and his buddy from Sick Life Tattoo tour across the country, with aspirations to show at car and tattoo events in Paris, London and Italy—a testament to the international growth of lowrider culture.

For Pacheco, it “speaks volumes” that people around the world “who appreciate car culture, appreciate the opportunity to tailor a vehicle in a way that is an extension of their personal identity,” are interested in lowrider culture.

Pedro Santiago, a Puerto Rican from the Chicagoland area, said his upbringing, love for cars, and a Facebook group drew him back into the scene. “I just got back into it. I’ve always had the love for it,” said Santiago, a member of Crewcab Mafia.

Crewcab got its start as a Facebook group, but now has chapters across the country, and welcomes people at any stage they are with their car. Their only rule? Four doors only. “[The car club community] kind of frowns upon the four-door car, like ‘oh, it’s a cheap car, it’s a parts car,’” said

Santiago. “Now, we’re showing them that these cars can look cool and do all the same things.”

Santiago showed a 1964 Buick LeSabre, restored to its original form with wired wheels and a gorgeous beige interior.

“I consider it like an art gallery. You get a little bit of [a] taste of everything,” said Santiago’s wife, Christina Aviles, who has traveled along to many car events.

Slow & Low brought together car clubs from far and wide while seeking to keep its integrity and identity. But many are left wondering if Navy Pier will become a permanent home for the festival.

“It’s to be determined,” said Pacheco, adding that Slow & Low has post-festival projects to focus on. “We do want to publish a new book, a very special catalog, representing this indoor edition of Slow & Low.” The lowrider community is multigenerational, and being passed on.

As it gains international notoriety, paying homage to its roots is a must. But for now, the lowrider community is left with a memorable day in history—the day they took over the Pier. .Jocelyn Martinez-Rosales is a Chicago-based multimedia journalist covering communities of color with a social justice lens.

EVENTS

Hundreds of lowrider bikes were exhibited alongside cars and motorcycles.

PHOTOS BY STEVEN ANTHONY GARCIA

Pedro Santiago and his wife, Christina Aviles, pose in front of Santiago’s 1964 Buick LeSabre.

Aztec dancers graced the floors of Slow & Low, a staple performance in Mexican celebrations.

PHOTOS BY STEVEN ANTHONY GARCIA

PHOTOS BY STEVEN ANTHONY GARCIA

OCTOBER 20, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

ART

Centering Community by Recalling The Past The Funnel, directed by Charlene Carruthers, explores the significance of how housing can shape and change one’s experiences.

BY DAVID ZEGEYE

I

had the pleasure of attending an early screening of The Funnel. Longtime community organizer Charlene Carruthers’ first foray in film directing, The Funnel is a window into the city’s evolution of community and housing.

As the film opens, we are greeted by Trina, a young woman who’s facing eviction from her apartment. After awaking in the

middle of the night, she takes a moment to stare at her surroundings before wandering around her building. She crouches against her apartment walls, pulls out her notebook and begins to write. As Trina writes, she is lulled to sleep and receives vision-like dreams.

Through these visions, the audience is teleported along with Trina to a 1940s

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 20, 2022

kitchenette apartment her grandmother, Taylor, is living in. This is where we begin to understand the film’s title, originating from a passage in author Richard Wright’s short story, The One-Room Kitchenette. “The kitchenette is the funnel through which our pulverized lives flow to ruin and death on the city pavements, at a profit.” Kitchenettes were becoming increasingly common in the early 20th century; they were small dwelling units with limited appliances, often constructed from dividing existing apartments into smaller apartments. Due to racist housing policies, most Black residents who migrated to Chicago from the South were often forced to live in the most poorly constructed kitchenettes.

We see how much has changed through the differences between Trina and Taylor’s apartments. Despite occupying the same space, Taylor’s apartment is cramped and suffocating in comparison to Trina’s bedroom and open hallways. As we see throughout the film, privacy is difficult for Taylor to maintain. She tries to hide her lover as she visits, but neighbors are nosy and can hear them through the walls.

Taylor regularly discusses needing more space to pursue being a writer. Going to the bathroom is a journey of traversing narrow hallways, avoiding long conversations, and standoffs between those in line to use the stall.

This was the reality many Black people were forced to endure when looking for housing in Chicago during the Great Migration. It can be easy to read the history of kitchenettes and think there was no community or joy in those buildings, but I keep thinking back to the contrasts between the building’s past and present. Despite her

housing conditions being worse, Taylor embodies warmth and extends kindness towards her neighbors. Even though Trina’s physical apartment is in better shape, loss and uncertainty fills the apartment with Trina only having her mother. Spirits seem to haunt her building, from portraits of Harold Washington, Harriet Tubman, and Taylor, both the characters and the viewer are reminded of the ancestors who have come before us and the slice of time we occupy.

I interviewed Charlene before the film’s screening and continued to reflect on the conversation to help process my viewing of the film. Charlene was inspired by writer Saidiya Hartman’s book “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments,” which documented the intimate lives and politics of Black queer women in the early 1900s. In particular, the cramped livings of New York City’s and Philadelphia’s tenements and row houses is what necessitated the radical politics many of them practiced. Knowing that much of her family was forced to live in kitchenettes when they arrived in Chicago from Mississippi, Charlene wanted to create a film that explored and honored their experiences.

More specifically, Charlene wanted questions of home to be the underlying theme of the film. Even though the story in the film is fictional, she took care to craft elements in the film that are rooted in history and resonate with the audience.

Through the film’s original score to the set designs, the apartment building itself became an actor, playing a character who has their own arc and history. To capture the setting and tone of the film, Charlene did thorough research on the

HEALTH

THE FUNNEL, DIR. CHARLENE A. CARRUTHERS, SCREENSHOT, JULY 2022

history of kitchenette apartments, like reading through archives, visiting different locations, and more importantly, engaging with family members and other Black residents who once lived in kitchenettes.

In this sense, the constrained hallways, the sharing of bathrooms, and the lack of privacy are what forced residents to be in community. Funneling is what helped build connections and intimacy between characters. We see this through characters embracing each other and the inside jokes they tell amongst themselves. Even when neighbors get annoyed by Taylor, she chooses to respond with appreciation and kindness, and deep down, they acknowledge that love. This is particularly noteworthy since community is often not guaranteed for many Black trans and queer folks, which is why the film chooses to center them.

Charlene wanted the community to be rooted in love and care—not in policing each other’s lives. This stems from Charlene’s experience in community organizing and understanding care is a practice. Even during the filming of The Funnel, Charlene embodied this practice by prioritizing crew members safety during the height of the pandemic and working to find a new filming location after the original was burned down.

Just as kitchenettes funneled tenants to occupy the same cramped spaces, the building in the movie provided a window between the 1940s and the present. From the vision Trina had, we the audience watch how the kitchenette went from being home for Black residents who would form community with each other

to becoming empty and desolate in the present-day. Taylor and the rest of the community’s lives are embedded in the building, acting as a temporal funnel for Trina to witness through her visions. The casting of Cat Christmas as both Trina and her grandmother Taylor allowed us to understand the similarities between them, and how their experiences diverge. From both of their practices of writing, we see their similarities and wonder how the land itself shaped their personalities and wishes.

Due to the film’s short length, the audience is left wondering if Trina remains well. Maybe this was an intentional choice for us to experience Trina’s uncertainty of losing a community. Us Black Chicagoans know the violence of displacement continues unabated. From residents pushing for community benefits agreements to trying to stop private developers from building on former public housing land, the fight against the destruction of community in this city is an ongoing process. Considering the external narratives and stigmas placed on people living in the projects, the film says we must be allowed to tell our stories and affirm our experiences in all of their nuance.

In the film, there was a touching moment between Trina and her mother, Ms. Denise. Sensing her daughter’s worries, Ms. Denise comforts and reminds her that they will continue to prosper. “They can’t get rid of us,” she says.

“Like Bebe’s kids,” Trina reassures. David Zegeye is an affordable housing organizer with the CBA Coalition and astrophysicist at the University of Chicago.

Illinois is Getting Better at Answering Calls to the Suicide Crisis Line But Will the South Side be Left Behind?

The new 988 suicide prevention line shows promise in Illinois, but questions remain.

BY JOSH MCGHEE AND OLA GIWA This story was originally published on MindSite News on October 3 in collaboration with WBEZ and Block Club Chicago.

Reprinted with permission.

A

round 10pm on March 20, 2021, Marian Owens flipped on the rear light of her West Side Chicago home and was startled to find her twentytwo-year-old grandson standing motionless on the second-floor porch, backed against a wall with his hoodie up. She spoke to him, but he didn’t respond, she said.

She ran through the house in a panic, then knocked on the bedroom door of her grandson’s father. When she didn’t get a response, she began dialing.

“I’m frantic when I see him out there like that and my first thought is he might jump off this porch,” she said, adding she can’t remember if she dialed 311, a nonemergency number, or 911. “I’m all alone. I don’t know what to do. All I could think of

is getting some help.”

Paramedics and eight police officers rushed to the scene, some arriving within minutes. Initially, the officers failed to get a response out of him either, but eventually lured him down the stairs by inviting him to shoot some hoops on the backyard basketball court, Owens said.

“When his foot hit that concrete off of that last stair, they all pounced on him.

They were trying to drag him towards the ambulance, but he was fighting them off,” she said. “Then all of a sudden I see him fall, but I hear his head hit the concrete.”

Officers tased him multiple times before handcuffing him to a gurney and putting him in an ambulance, according to arrest reports.

This is the kind of clash between mental health needs and police response that a new national mental health emergency hotline—988—was set up to avoid.

OCTOBER 20, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

HEALTH In mid-July, the national 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline made its debut. It created an easy-to-remember phone number that people anywhere in the country can call to get help for themselves or for others who are feeling suicidal or experiencing a mental health crisis.

The goal was also to start reversing a uniquely American tragedy that has become a flashpoint in recent years. Since 2015, 1,647 people with a history of mental illness have been killed by police officers— more than a fifth of the people who died in confrontation with police, according to a database maintained by The Washington Post.

In Chicago, an enormous number of 911 calls are for mental health emergencies: From January 2020 to June 2022, the Office of Emergency Management and Communication (OEMC), which runs the 911 call and dispatch center, received more than 171,000 calls classified as mental health-related—an average of 193 a day.

OEMC classifies these calls using a range of categories, with the majority tagged as mental health disturbances, well-being checks or suicide threats.

Between January 2020 and June 2022, officers responding to such calls filed 147 tactical response reports, indicating some kind of force was used by officers, according to data from OEMC and the Chicago Police Department.

While fatal shootings almost always make the news, other violent encounters with police—like the one experienced by Marian Owens and her grandson—are far more common and generally fly under the radar.

An analysis of the calls by MindSite News and WBEZ shows that ninetythree—or nearly two out of three— involved a Black person, including Owens’s grandson. Thirty-five of these incidents led to an arrest. In all but one of these incidents the person arrested was a person of color. In twenty-eight incidents, officers used a weapon—tasers, batons and, in two incidents, a gun.

Owens’s call left their West Side family in shambles. After her grandson was dragged, tased and arrested, Owens spent the next three hours with him at the hospital before he was taken to district lockup and eventually Cook County Jail, she said. He was charged with six counts of resisting arrest and aggravated battery to a police officer, according to the arrest report.

Toxicology reports showed PCP was

Brian Hardimon in his backyard on the West Side where a violent arrest occurred.

PHOTO: JOSH MCGHEE / MINDSITE NEWS

in her grandson’s system. He would later be diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. MindSite News is withholding his name because we have not had the opportunity to speak with him.

Representatives of the Chicago Police Department did not reply to calls and emails seeking comment about this incident or about racial disparities in officers’ responses to mental health-related incidents.

That was her grandson’s first arrest, Owens said, but he’s since been arrested at least two more times and has been cycling between hospitals, therapists and court appearances. Despite his diagnosis, he seems reluctant to cooperate with clinicians, according to his father, Brian Hardimon.

“I feel like he refuses help and stuff like that because he looks at it like, ‘Look how help did me when it came,’” Hardimon said.

Will 988 lead to change?

So will the transition from 911 to 988 change this dynamic? In one way, perhaps, it may.

In the months leading up to the July 16 rollout of 988—and for years before— Illinois ranked last among all states in a metric critical to the success of any crisis

call center: the likelihood of reaching a counselor in the same state, who may be familiar with local services. That dubious distinction now appears to be improving.

From April through June, eighty-one percent of Illinois calls to the old ten-digit suicide prevention number were sent to out-of-state call centers. But in August, the first full month since the three-digit 988 number officially went live, that number flipped, and eighty-five percent of the 12,300 calls placed from Illinois were handled by crisis counselors within the state.

That’s the largest improvement of any state in the country, according to Vibrant Emotional Health, the national administrator of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The advance was enabled by $9.4 million in funding for a primary call center built into Gov. JB Pritzker’s state budget for 2023.

The grant was awarded to the PATH Crisis Center in Bloomington, home to 77,000 people and the campus of Illinois State University. As the state’s principal emergency call center, it will handle calls from sixty-seven counties around the state.

PATH and five other call centers

If you or someone you know is in crisis or experiencing suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and connect in English or Spanish. If you're a veteran press 1. If you're deaf or hard of hearing dial 711, then 988. Services are free and available 24/7.

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 20, 2022

have also received $2.2 million in federal funds funneled through the Department of Human Services, according to the governor’s office.

Chicago, with the state’s largest population—and largest concentration of people of color—has only one call center, Community Counseling Centers of Chicago (C4). (Community Counseling Centers of Chicago is an underwriter for WBEZ 91.5) In budget year 2022, it was awarded a $60,000 grant, $140,000 less than the organization asked for.

For Fiscal Year 2023, C4 did better— receiving $375,000 of the $500,000 it requested, said Kelsey Di Pirro, the program’s director of community and rapid response programs. But it’s still not enough for the program to operate around the clock.

I

t’s also located on the opposite side of the city from the South Side, which has a predominantly Black population of 750,000 with pockets of poverty. Between January 2020 and June 2022, more than four in ten of the city’s mental healthrelated 911 calls originated from the South Side. These include calls classified as mental health disturbances, threats of suicide, domestic disturbances and attempting suicide, among others.

The problem with 911 The Chicago Police Department’s response to mental health-related calls has been under scrutiny for years. In 2015, the high profile shootings of Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones and the release of a video showing a white officer shooting Laquan McDonald, a Black teenager, sixteen times led to months of sustained protest and to the Department of Justice initiating an investigation of the department.

That investigation culminated in a 2017 report which found, among other things, that officers used force against people in mental health crises that could have been avoided. It also found the department doesn’t effectively use deescalation techniques to reduce the need for force and failed to adequately document the reasons for using force.

In one example, officers tased an unarmed, naked, sixty-five-year-old woman suffering from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. In another, officers tased an unarmed suicidal man who pulled away from the responding officers, according to the report.

HEALTH An alternative to 911 A principal aim of the 988 hotline is to get help for a person feeling suicidal or experiencing a mental health crisis without calling a 911 operator who might summon the police.

Hotline callers can be successfully helped over the phone more than eighty percent of the time, according to a spokesperson from the Illinois Department of Human Services—if the call is answered by an experienced phone counselor who knows how to work with a person in distress and knows about locally available resources to which they can direct the caller.

But creating an alternative to 911 and limiting the use of police to respond to mental health crises requires a reliable alternative that people know to call and trust to help them, said Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a leading mental health policy organization.

Without that, she said, people are likely to default to what they’ve known all their lives: dialing 911.

A system that relies on counselors based in call centers far from the area will have a harder time creating that trust and confidence, Wesolowski said.

Obari Cartman, president of the Chicago Association of Black Psychologists, said that in his experience, Black people usually dial 911 out of desperation and are unaware of other resources—especially if the resources are not based in their community.

His organization held a Black suicide prevention town hall last year.

“People aren’t aware of the suicide hotline in the communities that I’m working with,” he said. “They’re calling in hopes they get an ambulance to take them to the emergency room. They get to a place where they don’t know what to do. They just know something is wrong.”

Cartman is also concerned about the large number of calls to hotlines that went unanswered in Illinois and were diverted to out-of-state call centers—as well as the large number of callers that simply gave up and hung up before their call could be answered.

“We’re having, in the field, a serious access problem all around,” he said. “The hotline is supposed to be the first line of defense, and if it’s falling short, it’s hard to imagine what the potential consequences are for a person seeking help and not being

able to get it.”

All of which raises the question: Are Black and brown people who experience a mental health crisis in disinvested neighborhoods in Chicago well served by a crisis lifeline in Bloomington, roughly 130 miles southwest of their reality? And, if not, where can they turn for help?

“It’s a problem we’ve been grappling with across the country,” Wesolowski said.

“We want people connected to local call centers. We know a lot of those calls can be resolved over the phone with these crisis counselors, but we want to connect people to additional resources that are going to help them get well and stay well.”

Abandoned calls The lack of call centers in the Chicago metro area has been a problem for some time, said Matt Taylor, Vibrant’s director of network development, and leads to calls being diverted to a national backup network. They still get answered, he said, “assuming that the person was willing to stay on the line long enough.”

But often, they were not. An analysis of Vibrant data by MindSite News and WBEZ shows that over the past two years, more than one out of five callers hung up before they ever reached a counselor—a failure at step No. 1. This so-called abandoned call rate has been consistent for years, our analysis shows: Over the last six years, the rate of abandoned calls has ranged from eighteen to twenty-six percent.

The number of abandoned calls is strongly related to the number that are handled in state, since both are a reflection of call center staffing within the state. Call centers set their hours and coverage areas based on funding and staffing levels. When local call centers aren’t available, those calls are sent out of state, where callers are more likely to abandon their call or wait two to three times longer, according to Vibrant.

Vibrant tracks the percentage of calls answered within each state because it is considered an important indicator of whether callers are likely to get connected to local resources after the call ends. “It starts with call centers, because 988 is the front door in some ways to crisis service,” Taylor said.

The $9.8 million state grant to PATH in Bloomington was intended to increase Illinois’ call center capacity and reduce the large number of calls being diverted out of state. PATH CEO Christopher Workman

told WGLT Radio in February the funding would allow the center to hire 115 people.

He declined to comment for this article.

Before the grant, only thirty-five counties were covered by call centers and half of them didn’t operate 24/7. Over the last year, PATH expanded to cover sixtyseven counties, according to a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Human Services, which funds mental health services in the state.

Madhuri Jha, executive director of the Kennedy-Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity at the Morehouse School of Medicine, reviewed literature and surveyed practitioners to develop a policy brief aimed at ensuring the 988 lifeline and new call centers are visible and inviting to groups that are historically excluded in both urban and rural communities.

Her biggest takeaway from the work was the glaring lack of trust among behavioral health professionals that the funds would actually be used to spread equity and not just fund the usual agencies, she said.

“People want to see equity in 988.

People want to see historically invisible groups be reached by 988,” she said. “People are skeptical, however, [because] it has been left to each state to determine their use of funds.”

Few dollars to areas most in need Other states are indeed dealing with similar issues, but none of them had a steeper hill to climb than Illinois.

Only California, Florida, New York and Texas received more calls, and none of those states had an in-state answer rate below fifty percent in the final quarter before the transition to the three-digit 988 line. Illinois was previously handling close to one-third of calls in state. As call volume increased in recent years, the rate dropped to one in five in-state responses by early 2021—at a time when the pandemic limited options for mental health services.

By the end of 2021, the number of calls to the hotline had doubled, but fewer than twenty percent were answered in state, according to an analysis of the data by MindSite News and WBEZ. In contrast, in the final quarter before the transition, California handled eighty-six percent of its calls in state, New York handled seventypercent in state, and Texas improved its instate answer rate to fifty percent.

In preparation for the transition to

988, Illinois invested millions of dollars to grow its mental health infrastructure, but few of these dollars have gone to call centers that are well-positioned to serve the communities of color where most Chicago mental health calls come from.

“How is this not supposed to be interpreted as disinvestment in Black and brown communities,” said C4’s Di Pirro.

The state has put more resources into funding mobile crisis response units and seems to be spreading the money more equitably, spending about twenty-five percent of the $68.5 million in Chicago. C4 now provides crisis response to nineteen ZIP codes, including the entire West Side, but doesn’t cover the South Side.

If funded properly, NAMI’s Wesolowski believes these units could make a real difference by providing more humane and appropriate responses to mental health crises than police.

Kate Hoffman, a licensed professional counselor and peer specialist, hopes so.

At 7:30am on the last Tuesday in July, she gathered in a circle with other staff members of a mobile crisis team at the offices of Trilogy, a nonprofit agency focused on mental well-being on the North Side.

They’re all dressed in business casual— no camo or paramilitary uniforms—giving them an approachable appearance. She’s in a flowery sundress, and lines of ink flow from tattoo to tattoo on her exposed arms.

On her forearm lives her visual interpretation of a Haiku written by the Japanese poet Mizuta Masahide: Barn’s burnt down Now I can see the moon “It’s just a way for me to think about how that is the case,” she said. “Stuff can go really badly. Afterwards, things are different.”

Her job is to help people experiencing deep distress to see how things might be different—and help them regain a clear view. Josh McGhee is the criminal justice and mental health reporter at MindSite News.

Follow him @TheVoiceofJosh. Ola Giwa is a data analyst who works for WBEZ and enjoys teaching others how to program. Follow her @ amazingspeciali.

OCTOBER 20, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

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JUSTICE

‘The Evergrowing Industry of Warehousing Men and Women’ Melanie Newport’s forthcoming book outlines the racist history of Cook County Jail.

BY BOBBY VANECKO

T

here is not a time in Chicago’s history where the city was home to large percentages of Black people, and in which they had a smoothly functioning relationship with the CPD,” according to historian Simon Balto. As he details, one of the main jobs of the Chicago Police Department throughout its history has been to saturate the Black South and West Sides, arrest massive numbers of people, and put them in the Cook County Jail. As a result, historian Melanie Newport writes in her forthcoming book, “For as long as there have been Black people in Chicago, they have been disproportionately represented in its jails.”

While Balto’s 2019 book Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power details the uniformly racist and oppressive history of policing in Chicago, Newport’s new book, This Is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration, provides an essential historical look at the racist function of the county jail in city governance. As of 2020, the population of the Cook County Department of Corrections (CCDOC) was seventy-five percent Black and sixteen percent Latinx—a consequence, Newport writes, of “racist policing, high bails set by courts, and, perhaps most importantly, the politically contested, racialized ideas about what jails can do for people of color.”

Because these racially disproportionate rates of arrest and incarceration have existed for the entire history of policing and jailing in Chicago, the demand to divest from policing and incarceration to facilitate investment in resources like housing, health care, and violence prevention programs is the focus of local activists and community organizations. However, city leadership continues to pour more money into policing and incarceration, consistent with the historical insight that Newport provides—namely, that “[B]eliefs about the benevolent intentions of jailing... [have become] increasingly important strategies for laundering the illegitimacy of racist policing and judicial practices through other institutions.”

In the beginning of Chicago’s history as a city, as Newport describes, one of the most common justifications for jailing was rehabilitation. Today, the city has abandoned all pretense of rehabilitation in favor of warehousing people deemed a danger to society by racist police, prosecutors, and judges. However, throughout Chicago’s existence, the purpose of the city’s policing and jailing practices has remained the same: the control of primarily Black people, but also any other racial minority that is locked out of the formal job market and deemed undesirable to the smooth functioning

of racial capitalism. “The modern jail,” Newport writes, “is a vestige of Jim Crow politics that has been continually reconfigured since Reconstruction.”

Further, Newport’s book demonstrates that, like it has with policing, the city has continuously attempted to “reform” jails for their entire history, even though they have repeatedly failed to produce safety—both inside the jails and outside in the city of Chicago. Balto writes that “the history of police reform... is generally one of expanded police power and greater perceived legitimacy of the police. It is not one of police conduct being effectively regulated and constrained, at either the individual or the collective level.” Newport shows that the same can be said for jails: the history of jail reform is generally one of expanded jailer power and greater perceived legitimacy of jailing, not of jailer conduct being effectively regulated and constrained, at either the individual or collective level. This repeated failure of “reform” has resulted in the recent demands to divest from policing and incarceration.

As Newport writes: “the relentless reform of jails and their position as institutions of perpetual harm is inextricable from the undeniable role of race and racism in the institutional and political development of jails.”

Cook County’s first jail was built in 1833, only three years after passage of the

Indian Removal Act, which led to the expulsion of Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and other Indigenous peoples from Illinois.

At this time, the building of the jail was a significant departure from previous community-based practices where people who knew each other didn’t incarcerate their neighbors for lengthy periods before trial. However, the jail quickly became an essential component of racial capitalism.

For example, Newport details the story of Edwin Heathcock, a free Black man who was arrested and jailed in Chicago in 1842 for being “unconstitutionally free” and then sold at an auction across the street from the jail. As Newport writes, “The criminalization of Edwin Heathcock’s freedom demonstrated a pattern that would play out again and again as the jail served as a backdrop for white elites to debate whether Black people could be trusted with their liberty.”

Newport details another essential function that the jail played under racial capitalism: the incarceration of labor organizers, such as the four Chicago anarchists executed for their alleged role in the Haymarket uprising. One prisoner quoted by Newport said, “The entire concept for having prisons and holding prisoners... is to replace the eroded industrial and manufacturing economy with the evergrowing industry of warehousing men and women.”

OCTOBER 20, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

JUSTICE Since the beginning of incarceration as a practice, progressives and leftists have pushed back against the idea that it produces safety. For example, Newport details lawyer Clarence Darrow’s speech at Cook County Jail in 1902 in which he stated that “a jail is evidence of the lack of charity of the people on the outside who make the jails and fill them with the victims of their own greed.” Presaging the abolitionist arguments of today, Darrow said that the way for society to “abolish crime and criminals” was to “make fair conditions of life. Give men a chance to live.” In a prescient critique of prison and police reform, Chicago social worker Edith Abbott argued that the project of reform was doomed because “any humanitarian legislation that is left to a hundred and one different local authorities to enforce will simply not be enforced.”

After decades of prison and police reform attempts, Abbott’s criticism has proven to be warranted as police and jail guards frequently refuse to follow any of their newly “reformed” policies. The “code of silence” then ensures that these refusals are rarely detected or addressed.

Chicago’s Black population increased dramatically during the first and second Great Migration, throughout the early and middle part of the twentieth century, and any pretense at reform or rehabilitation was abandoned as the Black jail population skyrocketed alongside exponentially growing police budgets and presence in Black neighborhoods.

Newport writes that “the heterogeneity of Cook County Jail’s population was less the result of where crime was happening or even what crimes were criminalized than where police arrested the greatest numbers of people who could not afford bail.” Those high arrest locations were and continue to be concentrated on the South and West Sides of the city, where the most poor Black people live.

As Newport writes, however, “in contrast to efforts to portray Black incarceration as a social scientific fact, Black prisoners repeatedly demonstrated their agency and political awareness through jail uprisings.” This important point is highlighted throughout Newport’s book: the fact that prisoners themselves were constantly contesting the conditions of their incarceration. For example, Alsana

Caruth, who was jailed pretrial because he could not afford bail, submitted testimony to the federal court in a 1974 class action lawsuit in which he stated that “pre-trial detainees are merely political slaves.”

He implored people to understand that the jail was not an institution of reform but instead “a symbol of racist practices that pervaded the entire criminal justice system,” Newport writes.

Not surprisingly given the movements against racism and brutality present outside jails and prisons, the 1950s, sixties, and seventies proved to be the most active periods of prisoner rebellion in Cook County Jail and the rest of Illinois prisons, as prisoners responded to grievances like poor food and living conditions, overcrowding, violence, and arguments between prisoners and guards.

People locked in Cook County Jail were able to coordinate and communicate with each other during these years through outlets such as a jail newspaper called The Grapevine, which “created space for prisoners to engage directly with the conditions of everyday life in the jail,” Newport writes. However, after the punitive turn and explosion of mass incarceration in the 1980s and 1990s, newspapers like <i>The Grapevine</i> have ceased to exist. The federal Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) of 1996 has also made it almost impossible for prisoners to file and win civil rights lawsuits. As prisoners continue to push to improve their conditions, guards and politicians have continued to sabotage their efforts through both brutality in jails and legislation like the PLRA. This resistance to any humanitarian change has persisted as prisons and jails have continued to expand, and police departments have continued to receive seemingly unlimited funding, throughout Chicago’s entire history.

Cook County Jail has always been a place where the majority of people locked

up are there because they cannot afford bail.

This didn’t change much after the federal Bail Reform Act of 1966 because the Chicago Police Department has always continued to arrest massive numbers of Black people.

This history is relevant to today, when there continues to be debate about the ending of cash bail in Illinois—even after the passage of the Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act, which would eliminate cash bail beginning in January 2023, making Illinois the first state to do so. As long as CPD’s racist patrol and arrest practices continue, large numbers of Black people will be forced to cycle through Cook County Jail every year, no matter what happens at the judicial level.

Nevertheless, conservatives have frequently attacked the Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act and spread misinformation regarding the law’s consequences once it goes into effect in 2023. It is clear that their position is in favor of the mass pretrial jailing of Black Chicagoans.

These conservative attacks can be traced, Newport writes, back to the 1980s and 1990s when Richard M. Daley was Cook County State’s Attorney and then Mayor of Chicago. Throughout this period, as well as in the 1970s, Cook County Jail was consistently overcrowded, and up to ninety percent of the people incarcerated there were awaiting trial and couldn’t afford bail. “Jail crowding was fueled by a Chicago Police Department campaign to clear the streets of gang members with outstanding warrants through disorderly conduct arrests and traffic stops,” Newport writes. Of course, CPD almost exclusively arrested Black and brown people alleged to be gang members, even though there were and are gangs of all races.

Newport demonstrates how these racial disparities were sanctioned through racist criminal court systems and local politicians: “[Daley’s] belief that high bond amounts should be used to incarcerate ‘serious offenders’ before trial in the interest of public safety garnered

“For as long as there have been Black people in Chicago, they have been disproportionately represented in its jails.” –Melanie Newport

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 20, 2022

political support from police, judges, and jail administrators ready to rally around a politics of unfreedom that allowed them to escape accountability.” Daley further “showed indifference to using his office to intervene on behalf of people harmed by carceral agencies” when he ignored the evidence of police torture that he received from Cook County Jail doctor John Raba, allowing Chicago police torture and wrongful convictions to continue unabated.

Like today’s conservative attacks on the Pretrial Fairness Act, progressive responses to crime are also rooted in history. For example, in the 1990s, then– Cook County Public Defender Randolph Stone said that youth sometimes were involved in crime because of the “hopeless and depressed condition of many urban communities.” Stone called for a shift in focus from crime control to crime prevention by addressing issues like child abuse, housing insecurity, substance abuse, and lack of health care—calls echoed today in the defund movement.

Newport has written an essential document of Chicago history that provides context to many of the pressing issues that the city faces today. Cook County Jail is not as overcrowded as it used to be, but that is not for a lack of trying by conservatives; it is a testament to the community organizations who fought to reduce the jail population and end cash bail in Illinois. Nevertheless, conservatives are still trying to gut the Pretrial Fairness Act before it goes into effect, in order to incarcerate more poor Black people in Cook County Jail. This Is My Jail demonstrates that it is the abolitionists who are truly fighting for an end to all violence and harm, whether it takes place in society or in jails and prisons. Histories like This Is My Jail are crucial because they connect the struggles of previous decades with those of today. Melanie Newport, This Is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration. $39.95. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. 272 pages.

Available November 15.

Bobby Vanecko is a contributor to the Weekly. He last interviewed Helen Shiller for the Weekly.

LIT

T

Our thoughts in exchange for yours.

he Exchange is the Weekly’s poetry corner, where a poem or piece of writing is presented with a prompt. Readers are welcome to respond to the prompt with original poems, and pieces may be featured in the next issue of the Weekly.

Sunscreen Affective Disorder by chima “naira” ikoro

My friend tells me when he lived in a warmer state where the sun shined more often than not, people wondered how he managed to still be depressed. in another context, astronomers and astrophysicists will tell you the further you are from the sun… the safer. i wonder if the closer you are to whatever we’ve convinced ourselves is the source of happiness the more it burns. when you become more scarred than healed, the closed wounds become blackened and hyper pigmented by UV rays. the Sunshine State, of mind mimics a round pill, rounder than the sun or the moon, pulls like the tide the closer it gets to all that you are un-shore of— a sun bleached mind, a spotless mind, a flower bed, a tanning bed, a death bed, all communing around the fact that “at least you have somewhere to lay your head”— the bright side. scalding and warm. the blisters keep you up at night so you don’t miss a thing, not even the people you moved away from or the ones you brought with you and buried in your closet next to your winter jackets. remember those protective layers? i wear sunscreen even in the winter. all the layers in the world cannot hide me from the sun— the happiness that i am constantly told i am making light of, but i wish i could hold it—the light—and absorb it. become it. instead, on some days it just blackens me and burns me. “you should be happy, look how bright it is outside, on the other side, the grass, the smiles, the sky your mind everything should be smooth. why won’t you let the sunshine fix you?”

When my lovers ask why I don’t write love poems anymore (Ever see a fire consume a fire) by c. lofty bolling

You ever see a tree commit suicide; try to unearth itself Use its many branch as arms and pull the ground away a creaking, a moaning, until a pop, I fear My pencil will snap, I will reach for the pen (as I always do) But I fear the ink will simply vanish from the page, Float up into the air in front of my nose and vanish like Tired Smoke. My pen will suddenly disassemble. and be scattered Out in every direction in which it came from.

I’ll reach out to grab that which I can in those milliseconds Move a spirit through a body, through a spirit one at a time, through one space, into many spaces, dispersed I will exodus the flesh in a flash, expand into many directions I will fit in many spaces. I will, without haste disassemble myself, scatter across a nation, try to grab what I can.

In those moments, a fear will suddenly vanish.

The trees will remember the tale. Of the gurl braver Than fire, who tried to rewrite a nanci’s story. I feel From my web, the grounds suddenly vibrate with rage and dissipate. Roots don’t forget but Can’t name the wood grain, nor the age But I play this harp with pride After I obsess over the leaves, turning To say less, and do more I am the love poem C. Lofty Bolling is a gentle semi-giant from the South.

THIS WEEK'S PROMPT: “DESCRIBE A MOUNTAIN IN YOUR LIFE THAT OTHERS OFTEN SEE AS JUST A MOLEHILL.” This could be a poem or a stream-of-consciousness piece. Submissions could be new or formerly written pieces.

Submissions can be sent to bit.ly/ssw-exchange or via email to chima.ikoro@southsideweekly.com.

OCTOBER 20, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

BULLETIN Back of the Yards and Dia De Los Muertos

Davis Square Park, 4430 S. Marshfield Ave. Saturday, October 22, 9am. The cost is $20 for registration and $10 per passenger, includes patch. bit.ly/11thdiadelosmuertos The 11th Annual Dia de los Muertos festival takes place in Back of the Yards will feature a motorcycle run, school and community altares, Aztec blessing, vendors and a procession that starts at Fat Daddyz’s, 5437 S. Center Ave. and ends at David Square Park, 4430 S. Marshfield Ave. Funds raised will go towards mini grants awarded to Back of the Yards neighborhood schools for the purposes of arts and cultural enrichment, to showcase and create art, build elaborate altares and educate about the significance of Dia de Los Muertos. Registration begins at 9am and kickstands up at 11am. (Zoe Pharo)

Grand Opening of POP! Heights Park

11227 S. Halsted St. (between 112th and 113th Streets). Saturday, October 22, 11am–3pm. Free. bit.ly/popheightsopening Join in the festivities for the opening of POP! Heights Park, the first new community park along South Halsted in over 50 years. POP! Heights Park will provide nearly 22,000 square feet of outdoor space for the Far South Side communities to enjoy, with a brightly colored walking and roller-skating ribbon, activity zones including a half-

court basketball court and stage, treefilled seating areas, a community garden, vibrant new murals and more. The day will feature fall-themed family activities, live music, basketball, food and beverages from area restaurants, community vendors and more. POP! Heights Park is presented by the Far South Community Development Corporation in partnership with Sheldon Heights Church of Christ and designed by Lamar Johnson Collaborative. The project is supported by a grant from the City of Chicago’s Public Outdoor Plaza program. (Zoe Pharo)

Upside Down Halloween Parade

Washington Park, 5200 S. Hyde Park Blvd.

Saturday, October 22, 12pm–3pm. Free. bit.ly/upsidedownparade Arts in the Dark Will be holding their third annual “upside down” Halloween parade, a Washington park spinoff of their Oct. 29 Halloween parade downtown. The “upsidedown” nature means that families walk the parade route to view performance groups stationed along Russell Drive, rather than performers march. The 2022 parade will feature dance performances, circus acrobats, musical groups, sports mascots and more.

(Zoe Pharo)

Halloween on the Block

Various dates and locations across the city, all events are 3:30pm to 5:30pm. Monday, October 24–Friday, October 28, 3:30pm– 5:30pm. Free. bit.ly/halloweenontheblock

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ OCTOBER 20, 2022

“My CHI. My Future” and the City of Chicago are holding block parties across the city, with spooky events appropriate for all ages—costumes are encouraged!

The full list of locations: October 24th, Auburn Gresham, 1300 W. 79th St. and Back of the Yards, 4600 S. Hermitage Ave.; October 25th, Belmont-Cragin, 3601 N. Milwaukee Ave. and Greater Grand Crossing, 6600 S. MLK Dr.; October 26th, Rogers Park, 1631 W. Jonquil Terrace and South Shore, 7547 S. Euclid Ave.; October 27th, Austin, 5101 W. Harrison St. and North Lawndale, 4247 W. 15th St.; and October 28th, South Lawndale, 3000 S. Lawndale Ave. and West Pullman, 939 E. 132nd St. (Zoe Pharo)

Past, Present, and Future of Olmsted Landscapes in Chicago

Virtual. Tuesday, October 25, 6pm. Free. bit.ly/OlmstedLandscapes The Hyde Park Historical Society and the Washington Park Camera Club will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Frederick Law Olmsted, who is considered the founder of American landscape architecture and was the pre-eminent creator of the nation’s parks and greenspaces. In Chicago, he is responsible for the original plan for Jackson and Washington Parks and the Midway Plaisance, redesign of Jackson Park for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, and the transformation of the site back into parkland after the fair.

The virtual panel will address this history, the impact of his landscapes in Chicago

and the challenges of responding to climate stress and maintaining them for future generations. (Zoe Pharo)

9th Ward Resource Fair

Pullman Community Center, 10355 S. Woodlawn. Thursday, October 27, 10am– 2pm. Free. bit.ly/9thresourcefair Alderman Anthony A. Beale, State Representative Nicholas “Nick” Smith and State Representative Robert “Bob” Rita present a day of community resources including shredding, electronics recycling, prescription pill disposal disposal, flu shots, COVID-19 vaccinations, blood donations, help with transportation, veterans benefits and more. There will be over 50 community vendors. (Zoe Pharo)

East Side Trunk or Treat

Eggers Grove, E. 112th St. and S. Ave. E. Sunday, October 30, 1pm–6pm. Free. https://bit.ly/eastsidetrunkortreat The Forest Preserves of Cook County and the East Side Chamber of Commerce will be hosting their third annual “Trunk or Treat” event at Egger Grove, with family-friendly festivities and plenty of candy. (Zoe Pharo)

Auburn Gresham Healthy Lifestyle Hub Grand Opening and Open House 839 W. 79th Street. Friday, November 11, 4pm–7pm. Free. bit.ly/ auburngreshamopening The Greater Auburn Gresham

Development Corporation will host the grand opening of their Auburn Gresham Healthy Lifestyle Hub—a full-service immediate and primary care health center with primary care, oral health care and mental health services. They anticipated that the center will create 150 jobs; and they will see more than 30,000 patients and 40,000 visitors in their first year. The grand opening is open to the community, and will feature trials of the new services, free giveaways, live performances and family activities.

Tenants of the center will include UI Health Mile Square Care Center, UIC Neighborhood Center, Heartland Alliance, Bank of America, Chicago Bears Community Room and Teaching Kitchen, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago, Serenity Home Healthcare, GAGDC Headquarters, as well as a pharmacy and cafe. (Zoe Pharo)

Creative Placemaking in South and West Side Chicago Gallery 400, 400 S. Peoria St. Thursday, October 20, 5pm–6:30pm. Free. bit.ly/ creativeplacemakingchicago

Join Lawndale Pop-Up Spot’s Jonathan Kelly and Chelsea Ridley and In Care of Black Women’s Andrea Yarborough for a chat on placekeeping in Chicago. Kelley and Ridley founded the Lawndale PopUp Spot in 2019 as a freight container museum that highlights emerging area artists, while In Care of Black Women creates sites of communal care by reclaiming vacant lots for food and creative cultivation on the South Side of Chicago. For this program, all three will reflect on their radical engagements in

the South and West Sides of Chicago, with an emphasis on the activation and ownership of vacant land. (Zoe Pharo)

ARTS Chicago International Film Festival - South Side Showings

Nosferatu Screening with Live Score

Rockefeller Chapel, 5850 S. Woodlawn Ave. Sunday, October 30, 8pm–9:30pm.

Admission is free for UofC students and Doc Films pass holders. Tickets for others are $8 in advance, $10 in cash at the door. bit.ly/nosferatuscreening

Doc Films will be holding a 100th anniversary screening of silent horror film Nosferatu (1922), welcoming back celebrated organist Dennis James to provide a live score. A classic of German Expressionism, the film is an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula.” (Zoe Pharo)

“Shorts 7” will be held on Thursday, Oct. 20 at Austin Town Hall, 5610 W. Lake St. and “King of Kings” on Friday, Oct. 21 at Hamilton Park Cultural Center, 513 W. 72nd St. 6:30pm for both showings. Free. bit.ly/chicagointfilmfestival

The 58th Chicago International Film Festival, the longest-running competitive film festival in North America, features more than 90 features and 60 shorts from dramas to documentaries. The festival will host two screenings on the South Side: Shorts 7: Sudden Waves (Black Perspectives) and King of Kings: Chasing Edward Jones. “Shorts 7” is a suite of films that focuses on themes of memory, grief and joy, featuring working by Julian Turner, Sharrifa Ali, Alex Mallis and Titus Kahpar, Shanrica Evans, Kevin Jerome Everson, Claudrena Harold and dream hampton. “King of Kings” tells the story of 20th-century Chicago titan Edward Jones, the million dollar “Policy King” who went head to head with Al Capone’s “Outfit,” and hobnobbed with Josephine Baker, Frida Kahlo and Duke Ellington. It is filmed and told by Jones’ granddaughter, Harriet Marin-Jones, through the lens of her extended family. (Zoe Pharo)

OCTOBER 20, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

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