IN CHICAGO

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.

Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato

Editor Jim Daley Senior Editors Christian Belanger Christopher Good Rachel Kim Emeline Posner Adam Przybyl Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Martha Bayne

Arts Editor Isabel Nieves Politics Editor Jim Daley Education Editor Madeleine Parrish Housing Editor Malik Jackson

Organizing Editor Chima Ikoro Immigration Editor Alma Campos

Contributing Editors Lucia Geng Matt Moore Francisco Ramírez Pinedo Jocelyn Vega Scott Pemberton

Staff Writers Kiran Misra Yiwen Lu

Director of Fact Checking: Kate Gallagher Fact Checkers: Susan Chun, Hannah Faris, Maria Maynez, Ebony Ellis, Grace Del Vecchio, Savannah Huguely, Yiwen Lu, and Peter Winslow

Visuals Editor Haley Tweedell Deputy Visuals Editors Shane Tolentino Mell Montezuma Anna Mason

Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma Shane Tolentino

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Children ages five to eleven are now able to receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and will be eligible for a $50 Visa gift card for each of the two vaccines at any City-sponsored event or clinic. Chicago Public Schools will begin to offer vaccines via mobile vaccination vans and appointments at school clinics; classes are cancelled on November 12 for “Vaccination Awareness Day.” The vaccines are free and no insurance or government ID are required. This news is welcome: COVID-19 hospitalization rates of children spiked nationwide this summer, and unvaccinated teenagers were about ten times more likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated teens. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 8,300 children ages five to eleven have been hospitalized for COVID-19 in the U.S., and at least ninety-four children have died. COVID-19 hospitalization rates are three times as high among Black, Latinx, or Native American children than white children. The vaccine for children is one-third of the dose that is given to adults. Two doses are still required, three weeks apart. Vaccine locations in Chicago can be found at chi.gov/covidvax.

Clarence Carson, the CPS facilities chief, left his position one week after the Sun-Times revealed conditions at Eberhart Elementary School in the Southwest Side community of Chicago Lawn were so dirty—with cockroaches in the classrooms and no toilet paper or soap in the “filthy” bathrooms—that staff and parents had to clean the building themselves. CPS has outsourced the upkeep of its schools to private companies since 2014. In October, more than a year after announcing it would end their relationship with Aramark, one of two facilities contractors that has repeatedly fallen short of its custodial duties at multiple schools, CPS inked a $369 million, three-year contract with the company. That same month, CPS also initiated a $375 million, three-year contract with a new vendor, the global real-estate management company, Jones Lang LaSalle, to manage the district’s facilities. The new CEO, Pedro Martinez, recognized CPS is going through a “rough transition.”

Chris Kempczinski, the CEO of McDonald’s, headquartered in Fulton Market on the city’s Near West Side, apologized to employees Monday for a text message he sent to Mayor Lori Lightfoot in April. In the text message, which the mayor did not directly respond to, he blamed the parents of Adam Toledo and Jaslyn Adams for the children’s fatal shootings. In the text, Kempczinski wrote “p.s. tragic shootings last week, both at our restaurant yesterday and with Adam Toldeo [sic]. With both, the parents failed those kids which I know is something you can’t say. Even harder to fix.” In an open letter dated November 3, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and other community organizations cited a culture of “racial discrimination” at McDonald’s restaurants and noted the company’s public statements decrying injustice and racism. The letter demanded Kempczinski meet with Black and brown workers and community leaders by November 10 to present a plan to address systemic racism. As of press time, he had not done so.

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level. documenters, scott pemberton, india daniels, jaqueline serrato...................................5

Una organización liderada por trabajadores del sureste se expande para servir a los inmigrantes. james garrison, traducido por alma campos............................................8

“Why is it that we have this warehouse, our folks cannot even get the jobs here?” ata younan, city bureau......................10

Organizers from Stop General Iron reflect on this spring’s hunger strike. corli jay, ahmad sayles, olivia stovicek, and bridget vaughn, city bureau............................................13

Vaccines are available for kids, but accessibility remains a challenge. josephine stratman..............................17

Cop in lakefront attack has a history of similar incidents jim daley................................................19

A former CPS teacher’s take on the district’s return to in-person learning. jenna forton.........................................21

The Weekly’s poetry corner. dontay m. givens, chima ikoro...........................................23

Bulletin and events. south side weekly staff......................25

ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLEY APPOLD

While most Council members praised the 2022 budget at the City Council meeting, not everyone was satisfied. Alderpersons Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward) and Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) opposed the $76.5 million property tax hike. Sigcho-Lopez also called the $10 million allocated for mental health a “pittance,” saying more funds should have been diverted from ShotSpotter, CPD’s controversial gunshot detection program, and invested in vulnerable communities. His remarks echoed the spookythemed protest outside City Hall by community organizers. Member Raymond Lopez (15th Ward) called the 2022 budget proposal a “$16 billion spending spree” that he said could pass debt to future generations. Budget elements lauded by City Council members include dollars for homeless prevention and intervention, domestic violence prevention, and mental health services for police and the public.

The moratorium on school closures in Chicago will be effective immediately after SB 1784 was passed out of the Illinois General Assembly and onto Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk. The trailer bill made a series of technical changes to the historic elected school board bill that passed in the summer and was celebrated by community groups.

Jurors will get a pay bump to $35 per day from $17.20, Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County Timothy Evans reported during a 2022 budget hearing with the Cook County Board of Commissioners Finance Committee. Commissioner Frank Aguilar (16th District) recalled that he was paid $17.20 per day for jury duty circa 1988; it helped cover parking and lunch, but would barely do that today. Chief Judge Evans also said he hasn’t seen a flood of evictions as anticipated by some now that the eviction moratorium has ended. He also reported that his team has reached out to use mediators and to point tenants and landlords to available rental assistance.

Alderpersons voted 30-13 not to repeal the City worker vaccine mandate during a City Council special meeting. The mandate, issued by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, requires that City employees show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 by December 31 or submit to twice-weekly COVID-19 testing on their own time and at their own expense. An ordinance to repeal the mandate, sponsored by Council members Silvana Tabares (23rd Ward), Anthony Napolitano (41st Ward), and Jim Gardiner (45th Ward), would have required City Council approval of any future policies leading to discipline or no-pay status for City employees.

Nearly forty-six percent of Cook County Jail detainees currently receive mental health services; the average incarceration time for such individuals is greater than that of those who do not receive mental health services. That’s according to a report submitted to the Cook County Board of Commissioners Health and Hospitals Committee during committee meetings. The report noted that in the past two years the mental health caseload has grown both in number and in percentage of the total jail population. COVID-19 precautions limited in-person mental health services provided by the jail’s health center. Returning to normal operations has resulted in more detainees asking for mental health services.

The Cook County Department of Public Health is aiming for seventy percent of the eligible population to be vaccinated in all communities, department senior medical officer and co-lead Rachel Rubin reported. The percentage of the county’s eligible population receiving at least one dose fell short, at 68.9 percent as of the meeting, and, not including boosters, 55.6 percent have been fully vaccinated. On a community level, the vaccination rate varies widely: The average rate for at least one dose is seventy-five percent in northern Cook County, but sixty percent in southern Cook County.

It’s not clear whether next year’s taxes will go out on time. Cook County’s integrated property tax system was scheduled to go live in the spring of 2020, but Tyler Technologies, the company managing the transition to its iasWorld software, has moved that date to September 2023, a setback that affects many county operations. During committee meetings of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, members of the Technology and Innovation Committee received an update. Chief Deputy Assessor Sarah Garza Resnick reported that while elements of the transition to iasWorld have been completed, the Assessor’s Office also uses the County’s outdated mainframe, a challenge that contributed to causing property taxes to be late. While Garza spoke highly of the collaboration with Tyler Technologies, representatives from the County Clerk, Treasurer, and Board of Review, which would also rely on this software, emphasized that they would not tolerate additional delays.

The “Bienvenidos a Little Village” arch at 26th and Albany was approved for historical landmark status at the meeting of the Department of Planning and Development’s Commission on Chicago Landmarks. Built in 1990, the arch resembles the structures found at the entrances of many Mexican ranchos and is a salute to the largest nonAnglo demographic group in Chicago. The arch is located in the neighborhood’s main commercial street and is considered to be in the public way. Its maintenance falls to the Chicago Department of Transportation and is also undertaken by the Little Village Chamber of Commerce. With this approval, architect Adrian Lozano is the first Mexican to be recognized by a Chicago landmark designation. He also designed Pilsen’s Benito Juárez Academy and the National Museum of Mexican Art.

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

BY JAMES GARRISON

The far Southeast Side of Chicago, once a clout-heavy workingclass stronghold whose steel mills fed and furnished neighborhoods like Hegewisch and South Deering, has become something of a forgotten quarter. Far removed from the massive development projects that many other communities of the city are seeing, Chicago’s Southeast Side has languished since the collapse of the area’s manufacturing industry in the 1970’s. Once a heavily Polish community, many of the areas’ Spanish-speaking immigrants lack access to resources that other gateway communities like Little Village or Uptown can tap into.

Ana Guajardo, founder of Centro de Trabajadores Unidos (CTU), aims to change all that. A native of the Southeast Side and the daughter of a thirty-sevenyear veteran of an area steel mill, she bluntly assesses the loss of vibrancy that accompanied the demise of the community’s main economic engine. “Here's the thing: old-school South Siders have this pride of their community, and a lot of it comes from when they were younger, there was a sense of family, and everyone knew each other. Now, it’s very disconnected. Back then, there was a sense of belonging. Especially with the churches, people were very active. On Commercial Ave., it was packed. Now, instead of going to Mom and Pop shops, people go to Walmart and Target. A lot of the people who grew up have left.”

Centro de Trabajadores Unidos serves as a knowledge and resource hub for immigrant and socially marginalized communities on the Southeast Side, and increasingly in the south suburbs. Chicago’s role as an economic powerhouse has long translated into ample employment opportunities for new arrivals to our midwestern shores, but this doesn’t always result in equitable treatment or access to much needed resources. None of this is lost on Guajardo. “There is not enough investment in our communities,” she notes. “The Southeast Side has the most dumps and landfills in the city. When the steel plants started closing and leaving, there was no investment and no attention. The focus was Hyde Park and downtown.”

She adds that the loss of jobs led to a rise in crime and mental health issues. “There is only one mental health professional in 60617, and none in Hegewisch. But on the North Side, there are myriad choices. The south suburbs are even worse–there are no agencies or nonprofits. In Calumet City, there aren’t even meeting halls for nonprofits to meet in.”

When Guajardo first started the organization in 2008, a lot of her early work was on making sure that immigrant workers weren’t being taken advantage of by employers. She talks of cases where immigrants were being paid $3 an hour. Some of those companies were immigrant-owned.

Today, the Centro is making inroads in a variety of ways. With the expanded array of programs comes a need for more space, and so the center is breaking ground on a new workspace. Formerly housed in the basement of Our Lady of Guadalupe church in South Chicago, the new building will include a community center that can host leadership training workshops, citizenship classes. Though the project for the new building was originally greenlighted in 2014, construction was delayed after former Governor Bruce Rauner cut funding. With the assistance of local grassroots organizations and labor unions, the Illinois Department of Commerce and others, things are underway again.

Another show of progress is the Community Navigator Committee, which trains people to become community navigators and be on the alert for illegal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) practices. Another common danger is that immigrants facing deportation of immigrants who have loved ones in the deportation system are sometimes fleeced by scammers posing as immigration lawyers. The Community Navigators Committee recently received a referral for a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applicant who didn’t hear back for years after applying, so they worked with his attorney to send legal requests for a response to his application. Then, when his application was denied, the community navigators investigated why.

They discovered he was ineligible for DACA because he hadn’t completed high school and was listed in the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) gang database. His inclusion in the gang database was based a tattoo.Immigrants facing deportation did not have a right to a government-appointed attorney until August, when Governor JB Pritzer signed a law that would allow the Cook County Public Defender to represent immigrants in the Chicago immigration court, the community navigators supported him with legal representation. (As of press time his deportation case is still pending.)

CORTESÍA DE ANA GUAJARDO

POR JAMES GARRISON, TRADUCIDO POR ALMA CAMPOS

El lado sureste de Chicago alguna vez tuvo gran influencia y ha permanecido de clase obrera. Las fábricas de acero fueron la fuente que mantenía a los barrios como Hegewisch y South Deering, que antes eran poblados mayormente por inmigrantes polacos. Pero esa comunidad se ha convertido en una región olvidada. Alejada de los grandes proyectos de desarrollo que otras de las comunidades de la ciudad han visto, el lado sureste ha sufrido desde el colapso de la industria de manufactura en la década de 1970. Muchos de los inmigrantes latinos de la zona no tienen acceso a los recursos que tienen otras comunidades inmigrantes como La Villita o Uptown.

Ana Guajardo, fundadora del Centro de Trabajadores Unidos (CTU, por sus siglas en inglés), quiere cambiar todo eso. Guajardo nació en el sureste de Chicago y su padre trabajó en una fábrica de acero en la zona por treinta y siete años. Sin tapujos Guajardo reconoce la pérdida de la vitalidad de esta comunidad que ha sufrido la pérdidas de su motor económico. “La cuestión es que los habitantes que han vivido en el sur de Chicago por muchos años están orgullosos de su comunidad, y gran parte de ello proviene de cuando eran jóvenes… había un espíritu familiar y todos se conocían. Ahora, [la comunidad] está muy desconectada. En aquel entonces, había un sentido de pertenencia. Especialmente en las iglesias, la gente era muy activa. En la Avenida Commercial, estaba lleno. Ahora, en lugar de ir a las tiendas locales, la gente va a Walmart y Target. Mucha de la gente que creció aquí se ha ido”.

El Centro de Trabajadores Unidos ofrece recursos para los inmigrantes y las comunidades del lado sureste y, con mayor frecuencia, está sirviendo a los suburbios del sur. El rol de Chicago ha sido el de un motor económico porque ha ofrecido abundantes oportunidades de empleo para inmigrantes que llegan a las costas del medio oeste, pero esto no siempre se ha manifestado en un trato equitativo o en acceso a recursos necesarios. Guajardo entiende esto. “No hay suficiente inversión en nuestras comunidades”, señala. “El lado sureste es el que tiene más basureros y vertederos de la ciudad. Cuando las fábricas de acero empezaron a cerrar, no hubo inversión ni atención. La atención se centró en Hyde Park y en el centro”.

Añade que la pérdida de empleos provocó un aumento de la delincuencia y de los problemas de salud mental. “Sólo hay un profesional de la salud mental en el [código postal] 60617, y ninguno en Hegewisch. Pero en el lado norte hay infinidad de opciones. Los suburbios del sur son aún peores: no hay agencias ni organizaciones sin fines de lucro. En Calumet City, ni siquiera hay salas de reuniones para las organizaciones sin fines de lucro”.

Cuando Guajardo fundó la organización en 2008, gran parte de su trabajo al principio consistía en prevenir que los empleadores se aprovecharan de los trabajadores inmigrantes. Habló de casos en los que se le pagaba a los inmigrantes $3 dólares por hora. Algunos de esos negocios eran propiedad de inmigrantes.

Hoy en día, el centro está haciendo avances de diferentes maneras. La expansión de los programas implica la necesidad de más espacio, por lo que el centro está construyendo un nuevo espacio de trabajo. El nuevo edificio, que antes se encontraba en el sótano de la iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, en el barrio de South Chicago, incluirá un centro comunitario que podrá albergar talleres de entrenamiento de liderazgo y

PHOTO BY SEBASTIÁN HIDALGO, COURTESY OF CITY BUREAU

BY ATA YOUNAN, CITY BUREAU

Every day on his way to work, Steven Chavez passes by the newly constructed Target distribution center in Little Village. As he makes his way to I-55 to drive upwards of half an hour to his seasonal landscaping job in Hyde Park, he is reminded that a job at the distribution center would mean a shorter commute time, better wages and the possibility of health benefits, which he currently lives without.

So when the opportunity came, he took the time to update his resume and immediately applied for the warehouse operations position. On August 5, he filled out the application in English, a primary language for the MexicanAmerican who has been living in Little Village for two years.

Chavez says he has more than ten years of experience working in a warehouse, including six years of work in a facility vulcanizing semi truck tires and three years at Chicago Block and Brick, where he operated a forklift. So Chavez was confident his application would result in a hire. His hopes slowly started to dwindle as weeks passed with no response from Target. Six weeks after applying, he received an email that his application was denied.

“I was kind of shocked,” Chavez said. “I had been doing that kind of work for ten years or more. I’m qualified for forklift and working on machines. To get that email, I was kind of surprised.”

If Chavez’s application resulted in a hire, his would be just one of up to 2,000 jobs that Target has promised. Available positions include warehouse operations starting at $18 an hour.

Chavez is also among a number of applicants who say they haven’t gotten a call back from Target. Activists in Little Village say that although Target has promised thousands of jobs at its new distribution center, a number of Spanish speaking applicants are not getting call-backs.

In March 2019, despite growing opposition from community members and leaders about increased truck traffic, the City Council approved a $19.7 million tax break for Hilco Redevelopment Partners to build the million-square-foot Target distribution warehouse in Little Village (the completed warehouse is 1.3 million square feet). For a community already struggling to pay the bills and put food on the table, activists say the

BY CORLI JAY, AHMAD SAYLES, OLIVIA STOVICEK, AND BRIDGET VAUGHN, CITY BUREAU

When Jade Mazon reflects on how she persisted through February’s hunger strike to stop metal scrapper General Iron from moving to her home of the Southeast Side, she keeps naming more sources of support: medics from organizations like Chicago Action Medical and Ujimaa Medics who helped strikers manage their health while they demanded the City deny a permit to the polluting company, community members who provided meals for her daughter so she could rest, organizations that checked in on them.

“I never felt community like I did when I was on the hunger strike, and I feel so blessed and energized by it, even all these months later,” she said. “I still had to take care of my daughter, I was still trying to come up with rent money— life did not stop for those twenty-five days. And without that support, I know I personally would not have lasted that long.”

The month-long hunger strike that Mazon took part in ended with the City delaying the permit for the move. But even without the permit denied as organizers demanded, it was a climactic moment in a much longer fight—one that is still ongoing.

With the General Iron permit still delayed, the hunger strikers’ story—and the story of the entire Stop General Iron campaign so far—is one of community power changing what is possible. This summer, we talked to hunger strikers and others who contributed to the fight. Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Co-founder of the Rebel Bells and member of the Southeast Environmental Task Force and the Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Petcoke

I have been part of the environmental justice community here on the South Side, specifically the Southeast Environmental Task Force, the [Southeast Side] Coalition to Ban Petcoke, and the Rebel Bells. I had been plugged into those organizations already—we were already fighting. This is my third fight, my third company to go up against, but I’m kind of a late bloomer, I’m fifty-one; I didn’t really start getting active till about maybe six years ago. [My motivation was] pure frustration. I grew up in the ’80s, a couple of blocks away from the Wisconsin Steel mill, in the ’70s and ’80s. And our neighborhood motto was, “What’s that smell today?” We were just always inundated with toxins in the air, and then in the dirt, and nobody ever checked our water.

I’m not even in it for myself anymore. I’m in my fifties now. Now it’s about my children. Now it’s about all children of the neighborhood—they deserve better than this. When we were kids, we didn’t know that we deserved better. That was never a question for us. That’s what we got, that was our lot in life, and while the steel mill was up and running, everybody had food on the table, everybody had school shoes. Afterwards, it was a different story.

GENERAL IRON'S FORMER SITE IN LINCOLN PARK, BY BRIDGET VAUGHN

Co-founder of Southeast Youth Alliance and director of Youth and Restorative Justice Programming at Alliance of the Southeast

[The hunger strike] was literally our last resort. This was saying, if this doesn’t do anything, how much do our lives really matter to the City? And that was the beginning of it. When we first started this, we didn’t get a lot of attention. I think it wasn’t until like the seventh day where people were like, “Oh, there’s a hunger strike going on in Chicago.” And then a lot of my friends reached out asking how can we support, and that’s when we asked people for one-day solidarity [hunger strikes].

I thought about my community. And I think of my own family. My brother, when he was five years old, he had to be hooked up to a machine at night so he could breathe. He had to do that for five years. I thought about my grandpa. He died in December due to COVID. The doctor said he had weak lungs. And during that time, him and my grandma were sick at the same time. So my grandfather passed away. And we had to lie to my grandma for a week saying, “Oh, he’s just in the hospital,” but we had to prepare for his funeral... They put her on an air tank— the doctor said you can’t breathe that air out there. It’s the accumulation of all the impacts on my family. And being in these town hall meetings, and hearing mothers and fathers cry about how they wanted

BY JOSEPHINE STRATMAN

Myshayla Echols, a twelveyear-old Englewood resident, decided to get vaccinated in August for two reasons: First, “to protect myself,” and, second, her love of seafood. Although Echols was scared to get the shot, her father persuaded her with the promise of her favorite treat. “I was on the phone with my dad, and he said, ‘I’m gonna get you some seafood,’” Echols said.

After her feast of lobster tails and crayfish, the idea of a second shot wasn’t so bad. And once Echols got her shot, her twin sister was more eager to get it, too. “They’re talking to each other, having conversations with friends,” said Nashone Greer-Adams, founder of the nonprofit Something Good in Englewood.

Something Good in Englewood is one of many community organizations that are working to improve COVID-19 vaccination rates for children and youth and repair institutional and systemic health issues in particularly vulnerable parts of the city. These organizations are uniquely positioned and able to fill holes left by the City in some of the most underserved neighborhoods in Chicago.

Teens aged twelve to seventeen became eligible for the vaccine in May, and children ages five through eleven were approved for the Pfizer vaccine on October 29. By now, all minors can get vaccinated at select pharmacies, community clinics, City Colleges of Chicago, and hospitals in the city—but accessibility in the South Side has been a persistent challenge.

As of late October, twelve ZIP codes had vaccination rates below forty percent—all on the South or West Sides, according to data obtained by a public records request. In South Shore, just 31.3 percent of youths aged twelve to seventeen, or 873 teens, had received just one dose.

Chicagoland Vaccine Partnership, a collaboration of more than 160 organizations, is leading efforts to vaccinate Chicagoans in these areas, as well as strengthen a severely disinvested public health system. It has provided funding to around sixty local organizations around Chicago through a fund of $1 million from local philanthropies to provide community-designed vaccination outreach efforts.

By investing in Black- and brownled groups, the Vaccine Partnership believes that vaccination outreach efforts will be more effective and address the root causes of the vaccine disparity that has been widely reported. “This is not a quick fix to make sure we satisfy a dashboard,” said Max Clermont, the U.S. Public Health Accompaniment Unit’s senior project lead for Chicago. “This is really about building community capacity to respond not just with what is relevant, but respond to everything that plagues communities that have had a history of disinvestment.”

The Vaccine Partnership aims to empower residents by involving communities and hosting events like vaccination drives and youth programming. The collaborative works to mobilize community knowledge. “Your expertise in your community or your expertise doing community engagement, or around violence or working with seniors or parents and families… that is exactly the expertise we need,” Clermont said.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Protect Chicago 77 Initiative also seeks to involve community organizations. The initiative has been an effort to vaccinate seventy-seven percent of the city’s population aged twelve and up by the end of the year.

Citywide, 75.3 percent of Chicagoans aged twelve and up have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the city portal on November 4. However, these rates vary widely within the close to sixty different ZIP codes in Chicago.

The City hosts vaccine drives and strives to educate residents in underserved community areas, working with regional and community-based organizations already receiving funding through a separate City initiative, as well as health care providers, business partners, and faith leaders, a spokesperson told the Weekly.

Some residents needed other motivations to get the shot. According to organizers from Something Good in

PHOTO BY JOSEPHINE STRATMAN

BY JIM DALEY

CW: Police violence, racist slurs

On October 28, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) concluded its investigation of an incident in which CPD officer Bruce Dyker attacked Nikkita Brown, a Black woman who was walking her dog along the lakefront path, in August. Dyker had approached Brown to demand she leave the park because it was after 11pm, and following a brief argument, the police officer “forcibly grabbed Ms. Brown and a physical altercation ensued,” according to COPA’s report.

A widely circulated video of the incident shows Brown walking away from Dyker after asking him to put a mask on because of COVID-19. Dyker refuses. “You need to move away from me, I feel threatened,” Brown says as she backs away from him. “Good!” Dyker responds. “I’m about to put handcuffs on you if you don’t keep walking.” Then he grabs her arm and attempts to wrestle Brown to the ground before releasing her.

The incident was the latest in a string of similar ones Dyker has allegedly been involved in over his twenty-threeyear career as a Chicago police officer. According to records obtained by the Weekly, civilians have accused Dyker of verbal abuse, excessive force, and making threats on multiple occasions.

In nearly every instance, investigators determined the allegations were unfounded or that Dyker had acted within departmental regulations. In some cases, investigators were unable to contact witnesses or victims; in others, complainants did not sign affidavits. When that happened, investigators typically concluded the allegations were not sustained.

Signing an affidavit accusing a police officer of misconduct can be daunting, and civilians may be afraid of retaliation or simply want to put the encounter behind them. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a civil rights investigation of the CPD that resulted in the department being placed under an ongoing consent decree. As part of the investigation, the DOJ found that the affidavit requirement “creates a tremendous disincentive to come forward with legitimate claims and keeps hidden serious misconduct that should be investigated.”

The Illinois Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (SAFE-T) Act, a comprehensive policing-reform bill signed by Governor J.B. Pritzker in February, seeks to remedy that. Among other reforms, the bill changed the Uniform Peace Officers’ Disciplinary Act so that civilian complaints no longer require a sworn affidavit.

Officers who are accused of abuse and misconduct often have a long history of citizen complaints. A 2019 study published in the American Economic Journal that analyzed 50,000 civilian complaints against Chicago police officers found that cops who have more civilian complaints were far more likely to be involved in civil rights lawsuits.

Via a public-records request, the Weekly obtained Dyker’s disciplinary records from CPD and reviewed more than twenty civilian complaints made against him. Nearly half allegedly involved a verbal or physical altercation.

In November 2000, Dyker pulled over a man who later alleged that Dyker called him a “sp*c and other racial slurs” and threw his car keys away. No one else witnessed the incident, and investigators concluded it was not sustained due to insufficient evidence.

In August 2002, Dyker and his

ILLUSTRATION BY HALEY TWEEDELL

BY JENNA FORTON

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers have been the ones on the ground having to wrestle care out of a system committed to ranking and filing students and teachers. In a city where there is one police officer budgeted for every 228 residents, there is only one social worker budgeted for around 1,000 students. After teaching at CPS schools for almost a decade, and interviewing current teachers, it’s clear that teachers in CPS are still working to fill those gaps in care for students and continue to demand a massive change in CPS budget priorities as they have been for quite some time.

Nurses and social workers in every school were primary demands of the 2019 teachers strike. Unfortunately, teachers' priorities were pushed to the side and the agreement reached by CPS and CTU leadership to end the strike left these demands as mere promises. As teachers and communities were recovering from the strike, the pandemic hit in March 2020. COVID-19 disrupted everyone’s business as usual. Educators and students transformed our conceptions of schooling. In response, CPS systemically standardized “distance learning” to “remote learning,” where teachers and students were expected to maintain the same standards as in the school building.

ILLUSTRATION BY MELL MONTEZUMA

Our thoughts in exchange for yours.

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

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

by Chima “Naira” Ikoro

Gymnosperms are plants that don’t make flowers or fruits to hold their seeds. There’s a bunch of types of gymnosperms, One classification is Conifers— cypress trees, cedar trees, pine trees, usually having needles instead of flat leaves, for example. Gymnosperms make cones; hard, wood-like casings that hold their seeds. But no fruit. No flowers.

There’s one coniferous tree that will not agree. The Yew. It creates a faux fruit—a soft red flesh that encases its cones. The “fruit” is bright and alluring, but the Yew is a highly poisonous plant. While that red casing is technically edible, the bark, the leaves, the cone that’s disguised as a seed, every other part of this tree will kill you.

For some reason, I still wonder what it tastes like. Even though it’s not really a fruit, just Yew, trying to present as something you’re not— a gymnosperm, luring lost hikers and small animals to your needles, looking like fruit, tasting like fate. Yew and I could both ask ourselves; was it worth it? Me, curious enough to know a Yew could kill me, but even more curious about how Yew fake it so well, and why, and Yew, channeling all of yourself into creating fruit you weren’t meant to grow, so much so, it makes your entire being poisonous. But Yew didn’t choose to be a conifer—if Yew could pick, you’d be a peach tree, with a real pit and a real seed. So I lay in the shade of your needles, love them like they’re leaves, acknowledge how hard you are trying and taste what you made for me. So if I die here, it’s not as if I didn’t know. In fact, knowing was just that worthwhile.

Chima Ikoro is the community organizing editor for the Weekly. She last wrote about two artists from Roseland.

ILLUSTRATION BY THUMY PHAN

Online, Monday, November 15, 10:00am. Free. chicityclerk.com The committee will meet remotely to consider financing of the Chicago Lighthouse Residences, a multi-family affordable housing development on the Near West Side. Written comments will be accepted at Owen.Brugh@ cityofchicago.org until 3:00pm on November 12. Commenters may also call in on the day of the meeting to 1-833548-0282. (Jim Daley)

Online, Monday, November 15, 2:00pm. Free. chicityclerk.com The committee will meet remotely. Public comment may be submitted to marye.phillips@cityofchicago.org or to carl.erickson@cityofchicago.org until 2:00pm on November 15. Instructions on remote attendance and a meeting agenda will be posted on the City Clerk's website. (Jim Daley)

Online, Monday, November 15, 3:00pm. Free. chicityclerk.com The committee will hold the third of three public hearings on the City's 2021 redistricting process, which will redraw ward maps. The window for written public comment for the hearings closed on November 8. Instructions for remote attendance will be posted on the City Clerk's website. (Jim Daley)

Online, Tuesday, November 16, 10:00am. Free. chicityclerk.com The committee will meet to discuss proposed zoning changes and applications for planned developments. Questions may be sent to nicole. wellhausen@cityofchicago.org and raymond.valadez@cityofchicago.org. The agenda and instructions for participation in public comment will be posted on the City Clerk's website. (Jim Daley)

Various locations, Wednesday, November 17, Free. instagram.com/loveandnappyness The Love & Nappyness Hair Care Drive is a community service initiative that promotes community wellness through natural hair care. Donations will go to Ignite and St. Leonards Ministry. A full list of drop-off locations is available on the Instagram @loveandnappyness. Volunteer opportunities are also available. (Chima Ikoro)

City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St., Wednesday, November 17, 10:00am. Free. chicityclerk.com The full City Council will meet. Agenda and instructions for public comment and online and in-person attendance will be posted on the City Clerk's website. (Jim Daley)

Online, Friday, November 19, 1:00pm. Free. chicityclerk.com The committee will meet remotely. Written public comment may be sent to Committeeonpublicsafety@ cityofchicago.org until 12pm on November 18. Instructions for attendance and the meeting agenda will be posted on the City Clerk's website. (Jim Daley)

Pilsen Food Pantry, 1850 S. Throop St., Sunday, November 21, 5:00pm–9:00pm. Suggested donation. instagram.com/pilsen_food_pantry Pilsen Food Pantry invites the community, friends, and local musicians to its Thanksgiving fundraiser. There will be food, drinks, live music, games, raffles and more! There is a $10 suggested donation ($5 for musicians and free for pantry volunteers). All ages are welcome. (Chima Ikoro)

Lumber Studios, 2147 S. Lumber St., Saturday, November 27, 8:00pm–12:00pm. $13. instagram.com/fourtunehouse Speak Your Peace Live is a special event curated by Fourtunehouse, a creative company founded by young artists from the South Side. The event will feature live music, and headlining performers including Kai Crewsade and Senite, an interactive art installation, and DJ sets by Jay Ziah and DJ Stimmy. The event is sponsored by Jon Basil Tequila. Tickets will be available via Fourtunehouse's instagram. (Chima Ikoro)

Multiple locations, Friday, November 12, 9:00am–4:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3occPbv On November 12, classes will be cancelled and CPS's Youth and Family COVID-19 Vaccination Clinics will operate between 9am and 4pm, giving vaccines to children aged 5-11 years. The South Side locations where CPS will offer vaccines are Richards High School and Chicago Vocational. (Maddie Parrish)

CPS Loop Office, 42 W. Madison Street, Garden Level, Board Room, Wednesday, November 17, 10:30am. Free. cpsboe.org Advanced registration for speakers opens

COVID-19 vaccines for kids Children ages five to eleven are now able to receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and will be eligible for a $50 Visa gift card for each of the two vaccines at any City-sponsored event or clinic. Chicago Public Schools will begin to offer vaccines via mobile vaccination vans and appointments at school clinics; classes are cancelled on November 12 for “Vaccination Awareness Day.” The vaccines are free and no insurance or government ID are required. This news is welcome: COVID-19 hospitalization rates of children spiked nationwide this summer, and unvaccinated teenagers were about ten times more likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated teens. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 8,300 children ages five to eleven have been hospitalized for COVID-19 in the U.S., and at least ninety-four children have died. COVID-19 hospitalization rates are three times as high among Black, Latinx, or Native American children than white children. The vaccine for children is one-third of the dose that is given to adults. Two doses are still required, three weeks apart. Vaccine locations in Chicago can be found at chi.gov/covidvax.