12.07.23

Imagine your home, totally organized!

Custom Closets | Garage Cabinets | Home Offices | Laundries | Wall Units | Pantries | Wall Beds | Hobby Rooms and more...

% 40 Off Plus Free Installation PLUS TAKE AN EXTRA

15% Off

Terms and Conditions: 40% off any order of $1000 or more or 30% off any order of $700-$1000 on any complete custom closet, garage, or home office unit. Take an additional 15% off on any complete system order. Not valid with any other offer.

Free installation with any complete unit order of $850 or more. With incoming order, at time of purchase only. Offer not valid in all regions. Exp. 6/30/23.

SPECIAL FINANCING FOR 12 MONTHS!

2023© All Rights Reserved. Closets by Design, Inc.

With approved credit. Call or ask your Designer for details. Not available in all areas.

Call for a free in home design consultation and estimate

312-313-2208

www.closetsbydesign.com Locally Owned and Operated Licensed and Insured

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

SSW

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 30 Editor-in-Chief

Jacqueline Serrato

Managing Editor

Adam Przybyl

Senior Editors Martha Bayne Christopher Good Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Alma Campos Jim Daley Politics Editor Labor Editor Immigration Editor

J. Patrick Patterson Jocelyn Martínez-Rosales Wendy Wei

Community Builder

Chima Ikoro

Public Meetings Editor Scott Pemberton Visuals Editor

Kayla Bickham

Deputy Visuals Editor Shane Tolentino Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma Shane Tolentino Director of Fact Checking: Savannah Hugueley Fact Checkers: Rubi Valentin

Isi Frank Ativie Bridget Killian Christopher Good Kate Linderman Layout Editor

Tony Zralka

Program Manager

Malik Jackson

Executive Director

Damani Bolden

Office Manager

Mary Leonard

Advertising Manager

Susan Malone

Webmaster

Pat Sier

The Weekly publishes online weekly and in print every other Thursday. We seek contributions from all over the city.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, please contact: Susan Malone (773) 358-3129 or email: malone@southsideweekly.com For general inquiries, please call: (773) 643-8533

IN CHICAGO Brighton Park migrant encampment scrapped One week after crews began installing massive tents and power generators for a “base camp” on a city-leased lot at 38th and California, Governor J.B. Pritzker abruptly canceled construction on Tuesday. It’s the latest chapter in the city’s difficult response to more than 20,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in the past year, most of them since Mayor Brandon Johnson took office in May. The state-funded camp would have sheltered up to 2,000 asylum seekers in heated tents and be run by GardaWorld Services, a controversial security company that has run immigrant detention facilities, as the Weekly reported in September. Johnson proposed using such camps as a temporary solution to the influx of migrants, many of whom are awaiting a spot in the city’s brick-and-mortar shelter system while sleeping outside police stations. Most stations have been cleared, but close to 1,000 are still camping out at them and sleeping at O’Hare Airport. The Brighton Park location was controversial from the start, drawing protests from some neighbors and criticism from conservative alderpersons, and Ald. Julia Ramirez (12th) said she’d been kept in the dark about the plan.

The city commissioned an outside consultant’s environmental impact study of the formerly industrial site to determine whether it was safe for residential use. The 800page report, released last Friday, found mercury, arsenic, lead, and other potentially toxic pollutants in soil samples. (Despite assurances the report would be made public the previous week, reporters had to file Freedom of Information Act requests late Friday to get the administration to release it.) The report recommended covering the site with six inches of packed gravel to make it safe for sheltering migrants, and Johnson had earlier said such remediation efforts were “very much a part” of his plan for the site. Johnson halted construction on Sunday pending a review of the report by his administration.

On Tuesday, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) said the soil at the site “does not meet state cleanup standards for residential use,” prompting Prizker to scrap the development. City and state officials are now looking for other sites for temporary shelter during the cold months. Meanwhile, crews have begun to fence and clear a vacant building and parking lot at 115th and Halsted for a similar tent base camp.

Ramova Theatre to reopen by end of year Chance the Rapper, Jennifer Hudson, and Quincy Jones have joined efforts to renovate and reopen the historic Bridgeport Theater. The theater, which sits at 35th and Halsted and sports an iconic green marquee that looms over the sidewalk, opened in 1929 and ran for nearly sixty years until closing in 1985. Developer Tyler Nevius purchased the theater from the city in 2017 for $1 and has since led a $38 million renovation of the building, with $9 million coming from TIF dollars in 2022. In November, it was announced that Jones, Hudson, and Chance will be co-owners of the theater, which in addition to housing a single-screen movie theater, will include a 1,500-seat live music space, and a taproom and grill, according to Variety. The theater's first event is a 1920s-themed party scheduled for New Year’s Eve.

IN THIS ISSUE for hilliard towers tenants, ‘numbers is power’

A newly formed and growing tenants association pushes for better management of the iconic buildings.

emeline posner........................................4 despite in-state detention ban, immigrants are still being detained

ICE uses out-of-state facilities and electronic monitoring to detain and track undocumented Illinois residents.

josé abonce...............................................5 chicago students join national wave of pro-palestine university protests

Dozens of students have been arrested in sit-ins while university administrations stay quiet on demands to divest from Israeli weapons manufacturers.

kevin hu....................................................8 public meetings report

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

scott pemberton and documenters...10 how black investors are taking back a legal tool to restore affordable housing on south and west sides

The Community Receiver Program is working to‘right historical wrongs’ by empowering residents to use receivership in a new way.

kelli duncan, illinois answers project......................11 incarcerated northwestern students graduate

The inaugural cohort at Stateville prison is the first group of incarcerated students to graduate from a bachelors program at a top university.

jim daley. ..................................................14 a celebration of the dead

¡Pachanga! Chicago brought Day of the Dead to the 94th floor of the John Hancock building.

jocelyn martinez-rosales, paul elliott...........................................15 black-owned business leaving bridgeport due to vandalism

The owner says police have not responded to evidence of vandalism, making her feel unwelcome in the neighborhood.

miles parker..............................................16 who goes missing

Black children make up nearly sixty percent of missing person cases in Chicago, but police data make them hard to analyze.

trina reynolds-tyler, invisible institute, and sarah conway, city bureau..............................................17 delayed missing person cases

Chicago police can’t ask for people to wait a day before filing a report—but they do.

trina reynolds-tyler, invisible institute, and sarah conway, city bureau.............................................19 ceo says johnson’s 2024 budget includes shotspotter line item

The mayor pledged to end the contract during his campaign.

jim daley.................................................20 op-ed: chicago police budgets have grown for decades: it’s time to rein them in CPD’s budget is going up, again. What’s in it—and how did we get to almost $2 billion for police in the first place?

asha ransby-sporn.................................23 no cop academy: the documentary

Cover photo by Jim Daley

screens to enthusiastic audience support

The film chronicles efforts by Black and brown teenagers in 2017-2019 to stop the controversial police academy.

max blaisdell.........................................25

HOUSING

For Hilliard Towers Tenants, ‘Numbers is Power’ A newly formed and growing tenants association pushes for better management of the iconic buildings.

BY EMELINE POSNER This story was published online on November 21.

S

ome days, the roaches are so bad in Nicole Rappaport’s unit that her daughters are scared to get out of bed during the night. Her sons go around stomping them, she says.

Over the last several years, Rappaport says, conditions in the Hilliard Homes building she lives in have gone downhill.

It’s not just roaches that plague the iconic mixed-income housing complex on the Near South Side, Rappaport and other tenants allege —it’s the leaks, the recurring mold growth, the smell of sewage, and the poor building security. To take on these issues, Rappaport and other tenants recently joined together to form the Hilliard Tenants Association.

“It’s sad that they’re having to live like it’s normal with cockroaches,” Rappaport said of her children, the youngest of whom is five years old. She and her family have lived in the building for six years. “We pay a lot of rent and I would like them to use our money to actually have a nice place to live.”

Rappaport is one of forty-nine tenants from two buildings in the Hilliard Homes complex who signed on to a letter demanding that management company Holsten create a plan of action to address the “persistent issues” in their apartments.

Altogether the campus consists of four 22-story brutalist-style towers with 654 units. The two round towers on Cermak are senior buildings and the two crescentshaped towers to the north are family buildings.

On the morning of Friday, November 17, a small group of tenants representing the Hilliard Tenants Association delivered the letter to Holsten’s on-site management office. Copies of the letter also went to the offices of 3rd Ward alderperson Pat Dowell, the mayor, the Chicago Housing Authority

HIlliard Towers.

(CHA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

In that letter, tenants documented concerns about building conditions and the professionalism of Holsten’s management team at Hilliard. In interviews, several tenants told the Weekly that their maintenance requests are often ignored or dismissed, and that repairs, when made, are delayed or shoddy.

Photo by Emeline Posner

housing, Holsten owns and manages the four Hilliard Homes towers at Cermak Road and State Street, along with dozens of other properties in Chicago and surrounding suburbs. Holsten has also developed several mixed-income buildings as part of the redevelopment of the site formerly home to Cabrini-Green.

The Bertrand Goldberg-designed Hilliard complex previously operated as

“Before I moved here, I didn’t have issues like this. I didn’t have to worry about whether or not it was going to be safe for me to live in my apartment.”

“We hope that you will engage with these demands in good faith and that we can collaborate to make Hilliard Homes a healthy and thriving community,” the letter reads.

A prominent developer of affordable

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

public housing. Built in 1966, the towers were recognized as a “model community, socially as well as architecturally,” according to Maya Dukmasova of the Chicago Reader.

As part of a 1999 redevelopment agreement with the CHA, Holsten

assumed ownership and oversaw a $98 million rehabilitation of the buildings and the 12.5-acre campus.

The four buildings continue to serve low-income renters. Of the complex’s 654 units, around half are CHA rentals and half are designated as affordable rentals, or rentals that would be affordable to someone making sixty percent or less of the area median income.

The Hilliard Tenants Association currently represents residents from the two family buildings. Organizers said that they hope to engage with residents in the senior buildings as well.

In response to a request for comment, Holsten senior vice president Jackie Holsten confirmed that they had received the association’s letter.

“We are in the process of preparing a response updating them on what items are currently being addressed and those that need to be inspected so they can also be properly addressed,” Holsten wrote. “We take their concerns seriously and will work with the residents of Hilliard to resolve their concerns.”

Holsten did not respond to more detailed questions about specific issues and management practices.

Tenants first started meeting in late summer, after attending a know-your-rights workshop hosted by the Chicago Union of Tenants (CUT). When Hilliard tenants approached CUT about unionizing, CUT organizers agreed to assist them, organizer Jason Flynn said.

At these meetings, the newly-formed association learned that many tenants in the two family-designated buildings have been battling water in their units for years.

“People’s apartments have been getting flooded,” said Emma Chandler, a Hilliard tenant of five years. She said that water recently leaked in through the wall of her children’s room, soiling the carpet.

IMMIGRATION

Rappaport said that her apartment has also had several serious leaks. In the most recent incident earlier this year, a combination of water and sewage leaked down the walls of one of her son’s rooms when an upstairs toilet backed up. The contaminated water spread into other rooms of her house, she said.

She said that it took persistent calls to management to get the carpets cleaned and then weeks more of calls to get the carpets removed when it became clear that carpet cleaning would not remove the smell of sewage.

Public records show that city inspectors identified a leaky roof as one of the causes of water infiltration in the 2031 S. Clark St. building in 2022.

In a March inspection, building inspectors documented “black and brown staining” on the walls in five different apartments on the top three floors of the building. They also issued a violation for weathered and spalling masonry on the building’s exterior. The violations remain open.

At the 2030 S. State St. building, inspectors cited the property multiple times over the past two years for serious structural damage in the building’s exterior walls, balconies, and stairways. “Concrete particles are falling down in front of tenants apts doors,” the notes from a November 2021 inspection read.

During a follow-up visit to the building earlier this year, inspectors noted that building ownership did not appear to have taken any action on the issue since then. Those violations also remain open.

A spokesperson for the Department of Buildings confirmed that there is no permit for roof or masonry work on file for either building.

Along with the leaks, tenants said they’re struggling with mold in their units—and allege that maintenance staff paints over the mold rather than removing or remediating it. Studies show that untreated, persistent mold in a home can cause minor to serious health issues.

In the letter, the tenants association demands a thorough mold inspection and remediation where necessary, and for management to address the root issue of the mold. “(We want management) to resolve the problem and not just put a bandaid over it and cover it up,” Chandler said.

Tenants are also asking for roach extermination, investigation of a pervasive sewage odor in apartments, repairs to broken in-unit appliances like refrigerators and ovens, broken washers and dryers in the communal laundry room of one of the two family buildings at Hilliard, and enhanced security in the parking lot and building entryways.

“I’m frustrated and disappointed by management, for this to be going on for so long,” said one tenant, who’s lived in the building for ten years and requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. She says she has also experienced leaks, mold, and sewage backups over the course of the decade she’s lived there.

But one of her biggest concerns is the complex’s security and accessibility.

At the front doors of her building, she said, the automatic door buttons don’t work and the key card residents use to enter the building sometimes malfunction, leaving people stranded outside. “There is no one, (management) never answers,” she said. “You just have to wait for someone to come down and answer the door.”

Other times, the front door sits wide open for hours, she said.

“Before I moved here, I didn’t have issues like this. I didn’t have to worry about whether or not it was going to be safe for me to live in my apartment,” she said.

In advance of the letter delivery, members of the tenant association said they hope that the city and other agencies with jurisdiction over the building, like the CHA and HUD, will keep an eye on Holsten’s response to their demands.

The tenants association gave Holsten ten business days to produce a plan of action for addressing the health and safety issues or the association will seek other recourse, members said.

Meanwhile, Chandler said she is heartened by the dozens of tenants who have shown up to tenant association meetings. She hopes they’ll be able to improve living conditions across the two family buildings, as well as the larger complex. “Numbers is power,” she said. Emeline is an independent journalist covering housing and government accountability. They last wrote for the Weekly about an investment company’s stake in a South Shore condo building.

Despite In-state Detention Ban, Immigrants are Still Being Detained

Since 2022, immigration detention has ended in Illinois but ICE uses out-of-state facilities and electronic monitoring to detain and track undocumented Illinois residents.

BY JOSÉ ABONCE

A

na Navarro had only been out of prison for three months when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained her. The thirty-one-year-old, an undocumented resident of Illinois, was released for good behavior after serving multiple years for a conviction in a case in which her lawyers say she was herself a survivor of domestic abuse. ICE agents arrested her in Chicago despite state and local laws designed to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation proceedings.

Agents took Navarro from a halfway house in Grand Crossing to a jail in Juneau, Wisconsin, about 150 miles north of Chicago. In Juneau, the Dodge County jail is one of five facilities where the ICE Chicago field office detains undocumented Illinois residents.

Like Navarro, undocumented Illinoisans are not detained in local facilities because of the Illinois Way Forward Act in 2021, which prohibits using the state’s jails and prisons for ICE’s immigration enforcement. The law also further restricts local law enforcement agencies from sharing information with ICE.

Diana Rashid, a managing attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center’s (NIJC) Detention Project, said she has seen a reduction in the number of Illinois residents experiencing detention under ICE custody.

“We have definitely seen a noticeable decrease in Illinois residents being detained,” Rashid said.“We attribute that in large part to the closure of Illinois jails because there is overall limited housing space for noncitizens within this area,” Rashid said.

But the act has not stopped ICE from continuing to detain residents of Illinois.

ICE has simply found new ways to detain people, often requiring more resources to apprehend people and to take them out of state, Rashid said.

According to Rashid, ICE is also targeting undocumented people who are on probation. Advocates don’t yet know how the agency is locating them, however.

“The probation issue is something we are still trying to get a handle on,” she said. ”Who is making that contact, and how is ICE aware that this person is on probation, or like a supervision appointment?”

DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

IMMIGRATION

Rashid also said she’s noticed that ICE is detaining people right after they have been released from prison.

“We do see a good number of people getting picked up right when they are released, and it is not because we suspect that there is any collaboration between local law enforcement or the state sheriff and ICE, but it is readily available public information,” she said, through the Illinois Department of Corrections. [break, next graf start with drop cap] Navarro was on probation when ICE targeted her.

She said she suspects Indiana authorities shared her information with ICE. After she was released from Logan Correctional Center, which is about thirty miles north of Springfield, IL, she initially moved to Indiana to be closer to family. But because that state does not have sanctuary laws that prevent law enforcement from reporting undocumented immigrants to ICE, she returned to Chicago to complete her probation at a halfway house.

But once in Illinois, she received a phone call from a private number. The caller claimed to be a probation officer who wanted to confirm details regarding her whereabouts.

Within three days of arriving in Chicago to complete her probation, and following the phone call from a private number confirming her location, ICE agents arrived at the South Side halfway house and detained Navarro.

ICE agents detained Navarro in February and immediately transferred her to Dodge County Jail in Wisconsin. Upon her arrival, ICE and jail officials provided no further explanations or details regarding her detention. She also had no way of contacting her family and did not know how to use the phone system.

While in detention, a typical day for Navarro began by waking up at 5:30am.

She would then put on a wristband, which was used to identify her, and she came out at 6:30am for breakfast regardless of whether or not she wanted to eat.

At Dodge County Jail, Navarro and fellow detainees endured harsh conditions.

“It was always cold there. Always cold,” Navarro said. “They were always running out of sanitary items for females …. They never had enough sanitary pads or anything

ILLUSTRATION BY PAOLA ORTEGA

like that there. They were constantly on lockdown because they were short-staffed or because there was a fight in another pod and we always got locked down for it. The food was horrible. They were trying to say it was healthy but…it was not healthy at all.”

She added that undergarments were frequently returned to women in detention still “dirty” after being collected to be washed every three or four days.

Navarro said she and other detainees experienced racist treatment. Most of the staff did not speak Spanish and she was often asked by officers to translate for those who only spoke Spanish.

Navarro believes detention centers should not exist. Her family brought her to the United States when she was two years

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

old. Despite never having a choice in being an undocumented person in America, Navarro was jailed for eight months simply for being here.

Today, ICE detains Illinois residents and they end up going to Boone County Jail in Kentucky, Chase County Jail in Kansas, Clay County Jail in Indiana, Dodge Detention Facility in Wisconsin and Kay County Detention Center in Oklahoma.

In an email, an ICE official did not directly address whether facilities have interpreters, sufficient staff and why detainees may go on lock down but they said all facilities are evaluated regularly “under ICE’s detention standards, which have requirements for detainee health and safety, legal access, visitation

requirements and more.” They also pointed to statistics available on the ICE Detention Management page.

The ICE official did not respond to questions about how ICE may find information about a non-citizen on probation and what technologies they use when they do so but said “ICE conducts an individualized determination in each case to assess whether arrest and removal is warranted. This determination includes an assessment of whether the person is removable under the law, as well as other aggravating and mitigating factors.”

“People may be sent to jails that have newer contracts and therefore a bit more capacity,” said Fred Tsao, the senior policy counsel for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR).

“Increasingly they have been using the Kansas and Oklahoma jails for people who might otherwise have been detained here in Illinois.”

Since 2004, as an alternative to detention, ICE has increasingly relied on GPS monitoring, SmartLINK, VoiceID, and Dual Tech to monitor adults released from DHS custody and awaiting conclusions to their individual cases.

According to Alternatives to Detention (ATD) data from DHS, as of October 7, the ICE Chicago field office had 14,065 individuals on electronic monitoring.The majority, 12,832 people, are being monitored by SmartLink, an online tracking device that uses a smartphone or tablet to track individuals.

Navarro was released on bond on October 26 after getting her conviction vacated. It was a risky fight that did not guarantee her release.

“No one should have to experience eight months of detention in order to finally get the chance to fight their case from outside,” said Navarro’s attorney, Olivia Abrecht, an Immigrant Justice Corps Fellow with NIJC’s Detention Project. “That was a horrific thing that she should never have had to go through.” José Abonce is a Chicago-based freelance reporter who focuses on public safety, politics, race, and urban planning issues. He is pursuing a Master’s in Journalism from NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

Students Join National Wave of Pro-Palestine Protests

Dozens of students have been arrested in sit-ins while university administrations stay quiet on demands to divest from Israeli weapons manufacturers.

BY KEVIN HU

O

n November 9, University of Chicago students staged a sitin at the admissions office to call for a public meeting with President Paul Alivisatos. Led by organizers from UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP)—a coalition of campus groups that includes CareNotCops, UChicago Students for Justice in Palestine, and the National Lawyers Guild at UChicago— the protesters demanded transparency around the university’s investments and its complete divestment from companies that send weapons to Israel. After several hours, twenty-six students and two faculty members were arrested.

The sit-in is part of a wave of campus protests of Israel’s ongoing bombing of Gaza that have erupted at universities across the nation. On October 7, Hamas launched cross-border attacks that killed about 1,200 people, and took hundreds of hostages. In response, Israel began a massive bombing campaign that has killed at least 15,900 people, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.

Students at more than 100 colleges and high schools across the U.S. and Canada participated in an October 25 national walkout to call for a ceasefire. In universities, such calls are often accompanied by demands that their institutions cut ties with weapons and defense contractors.

Before the November 9 action at U of C, UCUP had been tabling daily at the university’s quadrangle and presenting their demands to the administration. The group’s organizers said they see these movements as descended from a lineage of campus

Student Organizers call for an admin staff meeting regarding investment transparency at Edward Levi Hall.

PHOTO BY BARRY HU

antiwar struggles and believe that students are particularly well-positioned to effect change towards achieving an end to Israel’s occupation in Palestine.

U of C has not publicly disclosed whether it currently has investments in aerospace and defense manufacturers, but in 2020 the Chicago Maroon, the student newspaper, reported that the university’s broad portfolio has in the past included Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon, which are some of the top companies in that sector.

The university has not publicly acknowledged organizers’ demands. But according to a student organizer who requested anonymity, it responded privately in a letter that reiterated the Kalven Report,

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

which established U of C’s institutional neutrality toward political issues. The report, written in 1967 as protests against the Vietnam War were roiling college campuses, established a “heavy presumption against the university… modifying its corporate activities to foster social or political values.” U of C has since referenced the report in response to calls for divestment from apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, the Darfur genocide in the early 2000s, and investments in fossil fuels in recent years.

“What we want to emphasize is that it’s not just divestment that’s political; investment is also political,” the organizer said. U of C did not respond to the Weekly’s request for comment.

Universities primarily make investments via their endowment funds, among other initiatives. Some are invested in hedge funds or private equity, generating additional income. The Nation reported in 2016 that hedge-fund investing has become common practice for schools, especially those with the largest endowments. The article estimated in 2015 that over $100 billion of educational endowment money nationwide went to hedge funds.

Ali, an organizer with the antiwar activist group Dissenters, which helped organize the National Student Walkout, told the Weekly that divestment is both a tactic and a movement that has been used in liberation struggles from apartheid South Africa to Palestine. Calls for divestment from Israeli companies are coupled with additional tactics in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Thirty-seven states, including Illinois, have passed anti-BDS laws, with New Hampshire becoming the latest in July. In February, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to one such law in Kansas.

“Universities, at the end of the day, are profit-making institutions, and so universities have the incentive to expand their endowment,” Ali said. “We’ve all seen these really disgusting statistics of how the stocks at Lockheed Martin, at Raytheon, at Northrop Grumman, at Boeing skyrocket into the thousands as each bomb was dropped on Afghanistan and Iraq during the Iraq wars and the invasion of Afghanistan.” Since October 7, the stocks of Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin have risen by 25

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

percent, 13 percent, 19 percent, and 12 percent, respectively.

Dissenters targets universities because its members see these institutions as increasing the profits of arms manufacturers.

“If enough institutions like universities sell their stocks in these weapons manufacturers, then it sends a message that . . . your profits will continue to plummet so long as you are signing off and literally arming the world’s biggest warmongers,” Ali said.

In addition to U of C, students at Loyola and DePaul also participated in the national student walkout. Northwestern students held a walk-out on October 25 and staged a die-in on November 9 to call for divestment from any companies with ties to the Israeli military.

Many of Chicago’s universities are private, which makes uncovering the details around their endowments and investments is difficult. For the University of Illinois, that data is more accessible. A 2023 annual report found significant percentages of the university’s endowment fund have been invested in entities managed by BlackRock, which via its U.S. Aerospace and Defense fund, among others, has held multi-billiondollar stakes in some of the biggest weapons manufacturers.

Jenin Alharithi, the vice president of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) chapter of SJP, told the Weekly that in addition to investments made through the endowment, UIC has engaged in partnerships that bolster the weapons apparatus, such as one with the Illinois Defense Manufacturing Consortium (ILDMC), a group that aims to strengthen the Illinois defense sector with data solutions. One such partner in the ILDMC is the Rockford Area Economic Development Council (RAEDC). “What RAEDC oversees is the manufacturing plants of Woodward” a Coloradobased aerospace manufacturer that has a facility in Niles, Althari said. Yittayih Zelalem, director of UIC’s Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Economic Development, is the ILD team’s coordinator.

Other UIC partnerships include aerospace and defense contractor Boeing and Caterpillar, which manufactures armored bulldozers used by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Alharithi said that UIC has one of the largest Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab student populations in the U.S., and because of this she feels a particular responsibility to mobilize against the university’s investment, calling it “vital to the national student movement.”

UIC’s SJP chapter led an action on November 16 at a Board of Trustees meeting to demand the university divest from “any entity that funds Palestinian genocide,” Alharithi said. The university did not publicly acknowledge the protesters’ demands, but in 2018, UIC president Tim Killeen released a statement that said, “actions such as those espoused by BDS would damage academic freedom and may have an intended or unintended antiSemitic effect which we utterly condemn.”

UIC’s press office declined to comment for this story.

U

niversity administrations across the U.S. have responded to calls for divestment in a range of ways, from issuing critical statements to suspending organizations.

Columbia University suspended both the SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace ( JVP) chapters for the rest of the semester, alleging that they violated campus rules by holding an unauthorized event after the groups held a student walkout. George Washington University (GWU) suspended its SJP chapter for three months after members projected statements supportive of Palestine, including one calling the university “complicit in genocide in Gaza,” on a campus building. One Jewish GWU student tweeted that the protest made them “worry about physical safety.”

At the University of Massachusetts, fifty-six students and a university employee were arrested after an hours-long sitin; a university spokesperson released a statement that said the students’ demands didn’t align with UMass’s public positions and policies. Last month, Brandeis University stated it will no longer recognize its SJP chapter, which the university said “openly supports Hamas,” and banned the chapter from operating on campus. At the University of Michigan (UMich), forty students were arrested at a sit-in where protesters alleged police were violent.

“The most consistent response that we

have seen by universities has been a morally reprehensible and legally indefensible suppression of Palestine student organizing and anti-imperialist student organizing,” Ali said. He added that Congress and state representatives have accused proPalestinian movements of being sources of hate.

In October, Florida governor Ron DeSantis attempted to deactivate all student chapters of SJP in Florida. In late November, the House passed a resolution condemning Hamas that also said “denying Israel’s right to exist is a form of antisemitism.” Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie cast the lone “no” vote (PalestinianAmerican representative Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, voted “present”), explaining he did so because the resolution “equates antiZionism with antisemitism.” On Tuesday, House Republicans did that explicitly, passing a resolution that “clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.”

Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky and New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, who both are Jewish, condemned the resolution ahead of the vote.

Ali says these responses ultimately strengthen the movement, whose organizers “refuse to be defined by repression, and instead use it as energy to propel and fuel the robust movement that they are waging for divestment, and for Palestinian freedom.” There’s some evidence that’s true.

A Florida SJP chapter filed a lawsuit against DeSantis for allegedly violating their free speech; twenty-one elected officials signed a letter calling for Columbia to reinstate SJP and JVP; and Columbia, Barnard, and Brandeis, alumni have withheld donations over university responses to protesters.

The movement appears to be growing, as well. More than seventy student organizations have joined a coalition called “Columbia University Apartheid Divest,” and the UMich divestment coalition expanded to a total of sixty organizations called TAHRIR. More than 2,000 UMich alumni withheld nearly $3 million in donations in November, and a UIC student trustee joined in the calls for divestment.

“Students have effectively reclaimed a narrative from an institution which benefits from racist, Islamophobic dehumanization of Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims,” Ali said. “They’ve reclaimed the narrative and

instead centered the rights and freedoms of the Palestinian people.”

He added that nearly 100 student governments have passed resolutions calling for university divestments since October 7.

Historically, universities have committed to divestment only after mounting pressure by student organizers.

Harvard divested from fossil fuels in 2021 after years of calls to do so from climate organizers. Columbia became the first university to divest from private prisons in 2015. The University of California Regents Board, which represents ten campuses, voted to divest $3.1 billion from businesses with ties to apartheid South Africa in 1986, triggering the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime in 1990.

Student organizing is not without its risks. Individuals speaking out have been subject to alleged employment discrimination, defamation, doxxing, and death threats. At the University of Michigan, the university canceled an election for two student ballot proposals.

One called for UMich “to acknowledge that 75+ years of Palestinian-Israeli tensions have been created through systems of settler colonialism,” and another, which countered the first, condemned Hamas for the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians.

Beyond campus quadrangles, protests against Israel’s bombing of Gaza have taken place in Chicago and around the world in a burgeoning movement that includes Black Lives Matter organizers, Indigenous protesters, and Jewish activists.

Ali said that it is incumbent upon those in the movement to persist because the death toll in Gaza continues to climb.

“War and militarism oppress everyone. They oppress Palestinians, they oppress Jewish people, they oppress Black people, they oppress all marginalized communities,” Ali said. “Our response must be hand in hand, targeting occupation and war wherever it materializes because we know that its presence is a threat to all of us, and its eradication means freedom for all of us.” Kevin Hu is a multidisciplinary writer, tech worker, and a recent Chicago re-transplant.

You can find more of their writing at www. kevinhu.dev.

DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

POLITICS

Public Meetings Report ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLEY APPOLD/SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level

BY SCOTT PEMBERTON AND DOCUMENTERS

November 6 At the meeting of the City Council Committee on Budget and Government Operations on the 2024 City Budget, the committee approved several ordinances from Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed 2024 budget for a vote by the full Council. These proposals included funding for each member of City Council to hire an additional ward employee; a tentative contract with Chicago’s police union that would add $64 million to the CPD’s nearly $2 billion proposed 2024 budget; and use of state and federal grants to provide the Department of Public Health with $3.2 million for vaccine programming and $37 million for tobacco-use prevention, and the Department of Family and Support Services with $3 million for opioid prevention, and $30 million for the City’s migrant mission.

November 7 At its meeting the City Council voted to give one of three referendum slots on the March 19 primary ballot to Bring Chicago Home, a proposal that would guarantee funding to address the city’s housing and homelessness challenges. State law requires municipal voter approval for changes to the city’s real estate transfer tax. The proposal would revise the City’s tax policy to institute a graduated tax on real property transfers over $1 million.

Advocates for Bring Chicago Home say this change could bring in at least $100 million annually for new permanent housing, housing vouchers, and other services and supports to keep housing. The grassroots initiative was launched in 2018 and struggled to gain traction under two previous mayors, but is a major policy plank for Mayor Brandon Johnson. His proposed 2024 budget contains $250 million for “homelessness supports,” as well as provision for the City’s first chief homelessness officer.

November 9 A preliminary landmark recommendation for the Jackson Storage and Van Company Warehouse in Little Village was approved at a meeting of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. The building’s Venetian Gothic architectural style is rare, especially on such a utilitarian structure. Built around 1890 and rebuilt in 1927, the building is currently home to the performing arts group Theatre Y, according to Melissa Lorraine, the organization’s co-founder and artistic director. Proposed additional uses are as a hub for nonprofit organizations aligned with Theatre Y’s mission, housing for artists-in-residence, food production, and general public space.

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

November 13 With 707 drivers, the Chicago Public Schools bus service is operating at fifty percent capacity, and members of the citywide Chicago Local School Council Advisory Board heard complaints about long commute times from attendees at their meeting. Kimberly Jones, the Chicago Public Schools’ executive director of student transportation, reported that the system is short more than 1,300 drivers. During the 2022-23 school year, she said, 365 students experienced travel times to school of more than ninety minutes, and some 3,000 had a greater than 60-minute commute. Remedies implemented so far include a five-dollar hourly wage increase for drivers , rolled out over the past two years, and ongoing monthly hiring fairs.

An amendment to the municipal code designed to protect city employees tasked with “enforcement”—that is, those issuing tickets and citations—was approved at a meeting of the City Council Committee on Public Safety. Under the current law, assaults on a police officer, firefighter, or emergency response worker can be penalized with up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. The update expands the law to include building and public health inspectors and parking inspectors. Several Council members said they’ve seen an increase in reported assaults on City employees. The amendment was passed by the full City Council two days later.

The committee also backed an ordinance to establish a quiet zone around a West Loop abortion clinic, where hundreds of anti-abortion protesters have sometimes gathered to harass patients and staff.

November 14 The six individuals attending a meeting of the 2nd Police District Council – Bronzeville/ Washington Park/Hyde Park learned more about a proposed CPD union contract that could allow police officers accused of serious misconduct to settle behind closed doors using private arbitration. The Chicago Police Board now reviews such issues using a public hearing process. District council members urged residents to get in touch with their City Council ward representatives to offer their opinions. The City Council would have to ratify the contract for it to take effect.

Grow Greater Englewood will be able to buy land to formalize its operation of a community garden in the 67th/Wentworth Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Redevelopment Project Area. At its meeting the Chicago Development Commission unanimously approved the $4,000 sale. Grow Greater Englewood is a not-for-profit designed, in part, to develop “sustainable local food economies,” according to its website. The Commission also discussed several City land sales to developers and other community organizations.

“This is not what the community voted forward, this is not what we agreed to,” complained Council Member Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) at a meeting of the City Council Committee on Finance. She was referring to United Yards, a major development planned for her ward, which began construction in March. Taylor said the development, as now envisioned, would create fewer affordable housing units than Back of the Yards, reiterating that the community understood that three sites were planned. The $58 million project calls for retail shops, a health clinic, and affordable housing. Originally, it was slated to receive seven million dollars in COVID recovery funds as part of the INVEST South/ West initiative begun under Lori Lightfoot, but it now stands to receive five times that amount in TIF funds ($14.5 million) and, if approved, $22.5 million in Multi-Family Housing Revenue Bonds.

This information was collected and curated by the Weekly in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org.

HOUSING

Black Investors Take Back a Legal Tool The Community Receiver Program works to “right historical wrongs” by empowering residents to use receivership to restore affordable housing.

BY KELLI DUNCAN This story was produced in collaboration with the Illinois Answers Project, a nonprofit investigative and solutions journalism news organization.

I

t was early 2020 when Jay Davis realized his family was going to lose his childhood home, a red brick house in Rosemoor on the South Side of Chicago that had been in his family for generations.

Davis’ great-uncle had been living there, and as his dementia worsened the one-story house began to deteriorate.

When he died, he left it to his son who had serious health issues and could not maintain the home, Davis said.

Davis, forty-one, wanted to keep the house from becoming another vacant lot on the South Side. He understood the significance of homeownership as a tool for building generational wealth that has been denied to many Black Chicagoans due to racist practices like redlining and predatory lending.

He experienced this first-hand when he was in his early twenties and made a foray into real estate investment. Davis was the proud new owner of a condo and another property that he planned to rent out when the 2008 financial crisis hit. He wasn’t able to make his mortgage payments—which he said he should have never been approved for—and lost both homes.

“When I decided that I wanted to get back into real estate, it was to combat predatory practices and to provide stable housing for people that need it,” Davis said.

With help from Courtney Jones, a real estate developer and leader of the newly established Community Receiver Program, Davis worked to fix up his cousin’s home for resale.

The Community Receiver Program

Courtney Jones is the founder of the Community Receiver Program, which works with Black and brown real estate professionals and community members to rehabilitate vacant and foreclosed properties. The group held a workshop on receivership and forfeiture Tuesday, Dec. 5 at East-West University in the South Loop. Photo by Victor Hilitski, for Illinois Answers Project

works with Black and brown real estate professionals on the South and West sides to rehabilitate vacant and foreclosed properties.

Typically, receivers are management companies brought in by the court to address unsafe conditions in buildings that have been neglected before turning them back over to their original owners.

Private, for-profit actors in this space aim to maximize profits and often don’t have much of a stake in the long-term success of the neighborhood. In the past, some companies have used receivership to take ownership of occupied homes through foreclosure when owners could not pay for the cost of repairs, a practice that is now frowned upon by the courts, said Will Edwards, assistant commissioner for neighborhood development and

housing preservation in the Department of Housing.

Today, the city partners with nonprofit agencies to do this work in a more community-minded way through a program called the Troubled Buildings Initiative, but the need has outpaced the federal funding available to these agencies.

With the Community Receiver Program, Edwards said the city hopes to “right historical wrongs” by playing an active role in training participants to responsibly rehabilitate abandoned properties.

The program works to empower local professionals—brokers, general contractors, mason workers and first-time investors— to reclaim receivership as a tool to uplift themselves and their communities by restoring affordable housing and keeping wealth generated from property sales

circulating in the local economy, said Jones, who is executive director of the Black Coalition for Housing, which co-runs the program.

Sometimes they petition to be receivers through the courts, but they also make use of other opportunities and city programs like Chicago Neighborhood Rebuild that help investors acquire, remodel and resell abandoned properties that might otherwise have remained vacant.

Since 2020, the program has trained about 520 people and helped rehabilitate sixteen buildings, contributing nearly $4.5 million in restored property value, according to the program’s website.

In Davis’ case, he began working on the Rosemoor home after his cousin voluntarily forfeited ownership to him in 2021. Davis said he paid about $7,500 in fees and unpaid water bills to obtain the house, and made sure his cousin found housing.

With guidance from the Community Receiver Program, he assembled a team and repaired the exterior of the home, replaced the roof and some of the pipes, and remodeled the basement.

He sold the house in 2021 to a family friend.

“My whole mission in doing this is really to build up the Black community and provide affordable housing for potential Black homebuyers,” Davis said, “and especially first-time Black homebuyers, so they don't have to go through what I went through.”

The History of Receivership Abandoned Buildings in Chicago

and

As the housing bubble burst in 2008, foreclosures spiked across the city but

DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

HOUSING

Black homeowners on the South and West sides were hit particularly hard due to heightened rates of subprime lending in segregated communities, according to a 2018 study published by the University of Illinois Department of Urban and Regional Planning. ­While other areas of the city stabilized by 2013, foreclosure rates remain high in communities on the South and West sides, according to data from DePaul University’s Institute for Housing Studies. This has led to the deterioration of smaller rental properties of two to four units, which make up the bulk of Chicago’s affordable housing, said Sarah Duda, the institute’s deputy director.

This contributed to a crisis of vacant lots and the displacement of more than 180,000 Black Chicagoans from 2000 to 2010 and another 75,000 in the subsequent seven years, many of whom left in search of economic opportunity and affordable housing, according to a report from the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

As foreclosures produced distressed and vacant properties, private receivers became more active.

Private receivers oversee the rehabilitation of properties, the cost of which is ultimately paid for by the building's original owner. If the owner cannot pay back the receiver, the cost becomes a lien—a debt held against the property—and the property may be entered into foreclosure and sold by the receiver, who can keep the profits. Receivers of occupied buildings collect rent on behalf of owners and can raise rents with the permission of the court to help cover repair costs.

It can take months or years for private receivers to fully recover their investment and even then they could potentially lose money, said Anthony Simpkins, president and CEO of Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) Chicago, a nonprofit that offers loans and other resources to support affordable housing and homeowners in underserved communities.

That’s why private receivers usually only invest in properties that have a strong potential to generate income, he said.

For renters, receivership is an essential tool when they have run out of options to compel their landlords to address poor, unsafe living conditions, said David

LaMarr Brown holds his 10-week-old son in May of this year in front of his home in Rosemoor, which he purchased in 2021 from a family friend supported by a program that seeks to empower Black investors and homeowners.

Photo by Marc Monaghan, for South Side Weekly and Illinois Answers Project

Wilson, a community organizer with the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, a tenants’ rights advocacy group.

But it comes with a significant risk.

Tenants may be evicted when the receiver starts making repairs or displaced later on if the receiver or the building’s owner increases rent, Wilson said.

In an effort to preserve affordable housing and protect residents from displacement, the city’s Troubled Buildings Initiative works with NHS Chicago and the Community Investment Corporation to provide building owners with resources to try to avoid the need for receivership all together.

When receivership is necessary, the two agencies act as receivers and use federal funding from Community Development Block Grants to cover repairs. This safety net allows them to address the “worst buildings in the poorest neighborhoods” that would not be economically viable for private receivers, Simpkins said.

While owners are still charged the cost of repairs, those who live in their buildings—single-family homes or smaller multi-family homes—can apply for grants to have their debt forgiven over a period of five years, said Edwards, of the Department of Housing.

For owners of larger buildings, they pay back the repairs via repayment plans or otherwise have a lien placed against their property. If they refuse or can't make payments toward the lien, the property is entered into foreclosure and sold to a new owner, oftentimes a bank.

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

As long as there is public money invested in a building through a lien or grant agreement, the Troubled Buildings Initiative restricts the rental price of units to rates that would be affordable to those who make eighty percent of the city’s area median income (AMI).

Critics say this restriction doesn’t do much to ensure housing remains affordable because low-income neighborhoods have a much lower median income than the city’s AMI, which includes surrounding suburbs.

South Shore’s area median income, for example, is less than half of the citywide median income, according to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

“When we do affordable housing, the question is affordable to who?” said Dixon Romeo, executive director of Not Me We, a community organization that fights gentrification in South Shore.

Using Receivership in a New Way The Community Receiver Program brings together the city, experts and nonprofit resources to train participants on how they might use receivership in a new way—often approaching the process as developers rather than temporary managers of properties, said Sanina Ellison Jones, president of the Dearborn Realtist Board, a trade association for Black real estate professionals that co-runs the program.

Instead of focusing solely on addressing unsafe living conditions, the Community Receiver Program seeks to fully renovate buildings and resell properties to local

homebuyers of color or rent them out at affordable rates.

Program organizers want to avoid turning properties back over to negligent owners - which is one way that both nonprofit and for-profit receivers have failed Black and brown communities in the past, Ellison Jones said.

“There was this cycle that we noticed that was continuing, which impacted the residents of the community,” she said.

Courtney Jones, who is married to Ellison Jones, said instructors strive to create a culture that uplifts the surrounding community as well as the investor. The fact that community receivers take on properties in their own backyards naturally pushes them to be better actors, he said.

“If you’re living in that community, how you manage that project is going to impact your own real estate,” he said.

Receivership training is free for participants and run by volunteers from city departments, the city’s two nonprofit lenders and the Dearborn Realtist Board.

Community receivers are assigned mentors and work in pods, learning from their peers.

Over the course of the program, participants learn how to acquire and rehabilitate neglected buildings and how to leverage grants or city programs to help obtain those properties.

“Often the value of the property is actually less than the cost to rehabilitate it,” NHS Chicago’s Simpkins explained. “So they can then come to us and get grants toward the acquisition and closing costs to make that project feasible.”

Beyond petitioning for receivership through the courts, community receivers can also acquire vacant buildings through the Cook County Land Bank, which has partnered with the program to hear project presentations from graduating students.

In this way, community receivers— much like public receivers—are empowered to fix up properties that would not normally receive attention from developers and sell those homes for affordable rates while still turning a profit, Jones said.

Jones said he hopes to continue expanding the network of graduates so that the Troubled Buildings Initiative can tap them whenever it needs work done on buildings, even if it is a smaller job like repairing a roof or fixing a boiler.

HOUSING

What’s Next for the Community Receiver Program?

Many graduates of the Community Receiver Program struggle to file their first petition for receivership because of the financial risk associated with taking on this kind of project, Ellison Jones said. Moving forward, she hopes to continue to partner with the land bank and with entities like the Chicago Community Loan Fund to get more financial backing for graduates.

Eventually, this might also allow community receivers to be assigned to larger, multi-family buildings, Courtney Jones said. Currently, the program is focused on single-family homes and smaller rental buildings.

The city will continue doing what it can to reduce barriers for community receivers and connect them with opportunities for monetary support, Edwards said. An ordinance passed last year by the City Council allows city debt to be waived on vacant or abandoned properties in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods for those

looking to rehabilitate them.

Simpkins said there is always a need for more federal funding to support grant and loan programs that NHS Chicago helps facilitate for community receivers and homeowners. NHS Chicago had to stop accepting new applications for those programs in August due to budget constraints, he said.

The Community Receiver Program is “an important aspect of the [Troubled Buildings Initiative] process that I think is not being utilized enough,” Simpkins said.

But it’s just one small piece in the puzzle of bringing about a reality where housing is regarded as a human right and where public policy affirms that, said Romeo whose organization, Not Me We, serves residents in South Shore and the surrounding area.

While Romeo understands the intention behind an initiative like the Community Receiver Program, he said the city needs to do more to safeguard affordable housing and address its history of discriminatory housing practices - to get

at the root of the problem.

“The reality is, it's one program that's got a pretty limited scope,” he said, adding that residents also need rent control, more paths to homeownership and additional rental vouchers. “We need all these things at once.”

The Rosemoor home When it came time to sell the Rosemoor home, Davis wasn’t out to turn a huge profit, he said. He invested $75,000 in remodeling the home and sold it to his best friend’s younger brother, LaMarr Brown, for $150,000 in August of 2021, Davis said.

“Now, my little brother is a homeowner,” Davis said. “...I’m very proud of him.”

Brown smiled as he stood outside of his home with his ten-week-old son, LaMarr Junior, on a sunny afternoon earlier this year. After completing his service with the U.S. Military in 2020, Brown said he was glad to buy his first home from someone he knew he could trust.

“It feels pretty great to be a homeowner because I basically went from barracks to barracks, so I never really lived in a home other than when I was a child,” Brown said.

After graduating from the Community Receiver Program, Davis purchased an Englewood property from the land bank through Chicago Neighborhood Rebuild, a program in which developers can get loans to rehabilitate vacant homes in Englewood, Garfield Park and Humboldt Park.

Davis placed the Englewood home on the market in September.

Now, he’s looking for a property on the South Side to take another shot at petitioning for receivership through the courts. He plans to continue this work of fixing up run-down buildings to support homeownership in his community. Kelli Duncan was an investigative reporting intern with the Illinois Answers Project in 2022 and 2023.

Explore more than 50 holiday displays and more!

NOW THROUGH JANUARY 7 SCAN HERE

FOR TICKETS DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

EDUCATION

(From left) NPEP graduates André Patterson, Abdul-Malik Muhammad, and Benard McKinley.

PHOTOS BY JIM DALEY

Tony Triplett leads a procession of NPEP graduates into the auditorium.

Incarcerated Northwestern Students Graduate

Youth wave Palestinian flags in front of the Cultural Center on October 21, 2023.

The inaugural cohort at Stateville prison is the first group of incarcerated students to graduate from a bachelors program at a top university

BY JIM DALEY

L Professor Jennifer Lackey, the founder and director of the Northwestern Prison Education Program, speaks.

Anthony Ehlers (left) and Taurean Decatur show off their diplomas.

ast month, sixteen Northwestern University students received their diplomas in a ceremony that featured author Ta-Nahesi Coates, Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton, Provost Kathleen Hagerty and others. The commencement, which had all the trappings and pomp of a typical graduation—cheering families, dignitaries in academic regalia, and a string quartet—was unique in that it was held inside Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum security prison.

The sixteen graduates were the first cohort in Northwestern’s Prison Education Project, and upon crossing the stage, they became the first class to complete a four-year bachelor’s program from a top-tier university. Jim Daley is an investigative journalist and senior editor at the Weekly.

Craig Harvey (facing camera) claps with fellow graduates at the 2023 NPEP commencement.

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

James Soto acknowledges applause during the Northwestern Prisoner Education Program’s inaugural baccalaureat graduation ceremony.

Graduates are greeted by fellow NPEP students as they enter the 2023 commencement.

ARTS

A Celebration of the Dead ¡Pachanga! Chicago brought Day of the Dead to the 94th floor of the John Hancock building.

BY PAUL ELLIOTT, JOCELYN MARTINEZ-ROSALES

Guanajuato, Mexico Artist Fosil Muralista airbrushing a woman portraying a Catrina during the event. La Catrina, an elegant skeleton with vibrant colors, hats, and dresses, is a contemporary symbol of the Day of the Dead.

PHOTO BY PAUL ELLIOTT

¡Pachanga!, the event production company celebrating Latinx culture in Chicago, hosted their second annual Dia de Los Muertos event at 360 Chicago on November 3.

Filled with mariachi, catrinas, ofrendas, and a lot of food, Chicagoans honored the dead in community.

For their next event, ¡Pachanga! is preparing to ring in 2024 with a New Year’s Eve party at Seven Night Club. Tickets are available for purchase for $40, but ticket prices will increase as the event approaches. Paul Araki Elliott is a photographer and filmmaker based in Chicago. He has worked with artists such as Tinashe, Towkio, and Vic Mensa, and his work has appeared in such publications as Vibe, Chicago Reader, TimeOut, and Complex. Elliott is also the co-founder of the multimedia production company thankyou.inc.

Jocelyn Martinez-Rosales is a Mexican-American from Belmont Cragin. As an independent journalist she’s passionate about covering communities of color with a social justice lens. She’s also the labor editor at the Weekly.

The Catrinas at this year’s celebration were members of Pilsen’s Gym who were airbrushed and adorned with flower crowns by artists Jose Art and Fosil Muralista.

Catrinas posing in front of backdrop.

PHOTO BY PAUL ELLIOTT

PHOTO BY PAUL ELLIOTT

Performers at the annual event included Mariachi Estrellas de Chicago as well as performance by Collaborative Institute of Cultural Arts and Kit Kat Lounge.

PHOTO BY PAUL ELLIOTT

Daniel Martinez and Memo Duarte, who helped cofound ¡Pachanga! in 2017, DJ’ed and MC’ed the night, respectively.

PHOTO BY PAUL ELLIOTT

¡Pachanga! ended the night with sets by DJ Roger McFly, who is also a ¡Pachanga! co-founder, and Pilsen DJ Eva Maria.

PHOTO BY PAUL ELLIOTT

Urban Warriors, a nonprofit that engages Chicago youth via sports and the arts, curated an ofrenda for the night.

PHOTO BY PAUL ELLIOTT DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

BUSINESS

Black-owned Business Leaving Bridgeport Due to Vandalism Whitney Cumbo, who runs PRIMA Lash & Beauty Bar and Supply, says police have not responded to evidence of vandalism, making her feel unwelcome in the neighborhood.

BY MILES PARKER

I

n December of 2019, sisters Whitney and Diamond Cumbo opened PRIMA Lash & Beauty Bar, in south Bridgeport. At the time, they believed they were joining a vibrant community that would welcome them with open arms. But after years of targeted vandalism with no response from the police or local officials, the duo plan to join other Black business owners in the area and shutter their doors.

For Whitney Cumbo, the journey to Bridgeport started back in 2015 when she was a full-time student at Northern Illinois University. “I started in college just doing lashes. It was supposed to be a side hobby,” said Cumbo. But through word of mouth, her side hobby grew into something she couldn’t ignore—a real business. Deciding that a traditional nine to five career wasn’t for her, Cumbo took a chance and used her rent money to become a certified lash technician. Certification in hand, she started her first business, Lash Me Whit.

Back then she had to split her week in half—four days at NIU, three days at home, growing a clientele in both locations.

After graduation, she partnered with her sister to open her first brickand-mortar store at 754 W. 35th Street.

PRIMA Lash & Beauty Bar was a fullservice salon, an open space for other Black beauty entrepreneurs—from lash and nail techs to hair stylists to makeup artists— who couldn’t yet afford or didn’t want their own standalone shops.

Though clients poured in from all over the city, Whitney and the other technicians working out of the Beauty Bar faced one early complication: Bridgeport wasn’t set up to support Black businesses like theirs.

Whitney Cumbo

PHOTO BY BRITTANY SOWACKE

“[Technicians] kept on running, like, miles away to go to the beauty supply because it wasn’t no beauty supplies in Bridgeport,” said Whitney. “So that is what prompted me to open my second location.”

Two years after the Beauty Bar opened, the Cumbo sisters opened a beauty supply directly across the street from the Beauty Bar. Though it shares its sister location’s sleek, high-end aesthetic, with a flower wall almost certainly installed for photo ops, PRIMA Lash & Beauty Supply is smaller.

It’s a single room with a few tables and shelves displaying various Black-owned beauty products.

Unlike the Beauty Bar, the Beauty Supply faced some early resistance. In the middle of the night in March of 2021, before renovations on the Beauty Supply were finished, a passing white man threw

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

a large stone into the window. The cameras at the Beauty Bar across the street caught the entire incident. Shortly after the Beauty Supply’s windows were broken, Whitney showed the video to her landlord. “He said that he recognized the guy off the video,” she said. “He actually knew [him] but the police still never did anything about it.”

Whitney’s landlord told the police that he knew the man but nothing came of it. He ended up fixing Whitney’s window, but, to date, neither she nor the landlord have ever been formally interviewed about the incident by the police or asked to provide the video.

The Chicago Police Department (CPD) was contacted for comment but did not provide one.

“I moved to Bridgeport because I thought it was safe, it was upscale. [But] I just feel like they’re trying to run us out,” Whitney said. Disturbed but not deterred, Whitney and Diamond opened a third location on the same block. Whitney describes that one as an upgrade on the initial location. “The first location was just like an open space beauty salon. The third location is ‘Beauty Suites,’ a more private setting for entrepreneurs and independent contractors.”

To date, all three PRIMA locations have either been vandalized or attacked. In July of 2022, someone threw a brick at the Beauty Bar’s window. Then in June of this year, one of Whitney’s stylists was entering Beauty Suites when a group of white youths began firing at her with what turned out to be BB guns. “I always contact the police when it happens but I never really get any follow-up,” said Whitney.

The Cumbo sisters aren’t the only

Black business owners who’ve been targeted in Bridgeport. Cumbo said two of her close friends also opened businesses in Bridgeport and that both of them have been vandalized as well. One of them, FAME, a Black-owned clothing boutique on Halsted, was forced to close. “He completely left Bridgeport just because of the vandalism,” Whitney said, of the owner.

Neither business owner could be reached for comment.

In February of 2022, a man in a ski mask threw a sledgehammer into the window of Haus of Melanin, another Black-owned hair salon on Morgan Street.

In August of that year, someone broke into the shop and stole a number of items, including backpacks and supplies gathered for a back-to-school supply drive. At the time, the owner, Brittany Matthews, noted that various backpacks were taken but the one depicting African Marvel superhero Black Panther was left behind. Both Block Club Chicago and NBC Chicago reported on those attacks.

Between January 2019 and November 2023, Bridgeport saw an average of about a dozen police reports of vandalism to small businesses each year, according to data on the Chicago Data Portal. Citywide, there were about 2,000 reports each year during that same period.

“I just think the problems need to be handled and they have not,” Whitney said.

“Seem like nobody really cares, they’re kinda sweeping it under the rug.” For her, it’s a question of what value the authorities and officials in Bridgeport place on Black business owners. The police are quick to contact her, she said, when they think the cameras on her property might aid them

JUSTICE

Who Goes Missing

Black children make up nearly sixty percent of missing person cases in Chicago, but police data make them hard to analyze.

BY TRINA REYNOLDS-TYLER, INVISIBLE INSTITUTE, AND SARAH CONWAY, CITY BUREAU PHOTO BY BRITTANY SOWACKE

in other investigations, like when someone was breaking into cars on the block.

“My camera caught the entire incident, and the police were in my face getting my camera footage,” she said. “So I just think, for them to think I can be an asset when things like that happen . . . they’re quick to show up. But when I voice my opinion as a young, Black female and entrepreneur, it feels like it’s not heard and it’s not fair.”

Alderperson Nicole Lee’s office was contacted for comment, but despite an initial promise to follow up, no one from the Alderperson’s office has provided a comment.

Just across Halsted from PRIMA Lash & Beauty Bar stands Sage and Shea, an African apparel and goods store owned

by Dominic Moab. The store is essentially a long hallway whose very walls seem swaddled in colorful fabrics. The smell of incense hangs heavy in the air over proud Black mannequins, handmade jewelry hanging from hooks on the walls, shelves of scented body butter, and rack after rack of intricately patterned clothes.

Like the Cumbo sisters, Moab’s initial positive reception in Bridgeport quickly soured. “When I moved in, the first week, I got a lot of people from the neighborhood who came to support me,” he said. “But a few weeks later, I started seeing eggs and paint on the windows.” Initially, Moab dismissed the vandalism as a simple prank, assuming the culprits would eventually grow bored and move on. But they didn’t.

“Like every other week, I would see paint or eggs.”

Moab’s store was hit multiple times a month from February 2021 until December 2022, when he was finally able to install

cameras by the front door. He never caught the culprits on tape and assumes that the visible cameras scared them off. He considers himself lucky that no one broke his windows, unlike other shop owners he heard stories about, including Whitney.

It has been nearly a year since the last act of vandalism at Sage & Shea, but the scars remain. Moab’s customers can still see the blue paint staining the wall just to the right of the doorframe on their way in.

For now, Moab plans to stay in Bridgeport, content that, for his shop at least, the problem seems to have ended.

Whitney Cumbo is of a different mind. “[It’s] definitely made me feel that, when I’m ready to expand, I don’t want to expand in Bridgeport anymore.” Though she believes that Bridgeport doesn’t have a lot of crime, she feels what crime there is seems targeted at Black residents and business owners. “I just don’t really want to be targeted like that. I would rather go somewhere that appreciates me, my business.”

Once the terms of the leases of her existing three properties expire, she plans to relocate them. As of yet, she hasn’t settled on a neighborhood. But she’s hopeful that, wherever she lands, she’ll be valued as an asset to the community, not an intruder.

“Just because I’m young and Black don’t mean I’m not worthy, don’t mean I don’t belong here,” she said, “I just want to be treated with respect because that’s the only thing I’ve ever shown Bridgeport.” Miles Parker is a Black writer and filmmaker based out of Hyde Park.

C

hicago’s missing person crisis is a Black issue.

City Bureau and the Invisible Institute recently released a two-year investigation into how Chicago police handle missing person cases that shows the disproportionate impact on Black women and girls, how police have mistreated family members or delayed cases, and how poor police data is making the problem harder to solve.

For this investigation, City Bureau and the Invisible Institute requested the Chicago Police Department’s missing person reports from 2000 to 2021, analyzed them and interviewed more than forty sources. Police missing persons data was cross referenced with underlying investigative documents, Chicago Police Department homicide data, medical examiner death data and news reports.

The analysis shows that of the approximately 340,000 cases in this time period, Black children make up fifty-seven percent of cases. Black girls between the ages of ten and twenty make up nearly one third of all missing person cases in the city, according to police data, despite comprising only two percent of the city population as of 2020. This racial disparity has remained relatively constant over the past two decades, even as cases overall have fallen. (Since 2000, missing person cases have fallen by about fifty percent and experts are unsure why.)

Latinx people make up fifteen percent of all cases, but experts believe this figure is underreported due to immigration enforcement concerns.

Despite this, media attention for

white victims is still far more pervasive— so much so that “missing white woman syndrome” has become part of our lexicon.

“A lot of families, they said, ‘Hey, we didn't get any kind of attention. Nobody cared about my missing family members,’” says Damon Lamar Reed, a local artist who co-runs the Still Searching Project, a series of portraits of missing Black women and girls, with his wife, Nicole Reed.

Data graph: Data visualizations by Aïcha Camara and Trina Reynolds-Tyler In 2017, the Chicago City Council questioned police officials about the racial disparity in missing person cases, with at least one alderperson pushing for solutions to protect Black women and girls. Instead, “CPD brass were short on answers. In fact they deny there’s a problem,” according to a report by the Chicago Reader.

When Sgt. Jeffrey Coleman was asked by an alderperson if police needed more resources to work on missing person cases, Coleman said only that “it’s important to communicate to the city’s parents that they must stay aware of their children’s activities and whereabouts,” the Reader wrote.

Young people do make up a large portion of missing person cases, in Chicago and beyond, according to police and FBI data—and these cases are often referred to as “runaways,” assuming that runaway people do not want to be found. In fact, the term “runaway” has become synonymous with police putting less effort into searching for a missing child, according to a USA Today review of fifty police procedural manuals across the country. (The analysis did not include Chicago.)

DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

JUSTICE

Community advocates say when police dismiss runaway cases, parents of missing children and adults don’t get the services they deserve. This attitude ignores the fact that Black women and girls are at higher risk for violent crime. Black girls are more likely to be victims of sex trafficking, making up more than half of all child prostitution arrests nationwide, according to 2019 FBI crime reporting data. The number of Black female homicide victims in Cook County from 2017 to 2022 was three times more than white and Latina victims combined, according to the medical examiner’s office. Black women make up more than half of all domestic violence survivors. Missingness is both a symptom and a cause of these risk factors.

“Redlining, racism—we literally create the landscape for murdering Black women and girls in Chicago,” says Beverly Reed-Scott, a former sex worker, journalist and community organizer who advocates on behalf of victims of gender-based violence.

Six years ago, researcher and retired investigative journalist Thomas Hargrove identified fifty-one murdered women in Chicago as potential victims of a single serial killer. His theory led to a cascade of headlines and evening news stories, bringing the issue of missing persons to broader public attention and stepping up anxiety in Black neighborhoods where these cases were well known. Since then, police investigations have re-examined DNA evidence and determined it was unlikely all fifty-one women were murdered by the same person.

Local advocates close to the issue still believe there are multiple serial killers targeting Black women and girls.

The victims identified by Hargrove were almost all Black women, often strangled or asphyxiated, their bodies discarded in South or West Side abandoned buildings, alleys, trash cans, lots and parks, as South Side Weekly reported. Many had histories of substance use and sex work.

Community members point out that the roots of the problem extend beyond violent individuals to complex societal problems like segregation and disinvestment, underfunded and inaccessible mental health services, intimate partner violence and domestic violence.

That’s why the new Illinois Task Force on Missing and Murdered Chicago Women, which convened for the first time in May, will focus on root causes for missingness and violence, and police practices, such as data collection, that impede their ability to solve these cases.

The task force has no budget, but its impact may lie in its recommendations to the Illinois General Assembly and Governor J.B. Pritzker, according to state Sen. Mattie Hunter, who along with state Rep. Kam Buckner is co-chairing the task force.

“Families keep asking for and waiting for answers, and they never receive answers from law enforcement,” says Hunter.

The task force hoped to rely on police

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

data to help develop solutions. However, when City Bureau and the Invisible Institute analyzed CPD data from 2000 to 2021, it was difficult to come to definitive conclusions beyond looking at demographics.

For instance, police recorded 99.8 percent of all cases were closed and not criminal in nature, indicating the person was “likely found.” Missing person cases are not simply labeled “located” or “not located.” Interviews with multiple police sources indicated that even internally, it’s unclear if this means nearly every missing person in Chicago is found alive and well, and not the victim of any crime. CPD media affairs did not respond to a request for comment.

CPD data also claims that fewer than 300 missing person cases out of over 340,000 were reclassified as a crime, and only ten were reclassified as homicides. But reporters found at least eleven additional cases where individuals who were reported missing were later the subject of a homicide investigation—and where the original case remains labeled “non-criminal.”

If it’s true that police are not linking missing person cases with criminal investigations, “Well, that’s obviously bad record-keeping,” says Hargrove. “The mistakes that humans make with the data [are] the primary driver of this real problem everywhere. … You want those records to be linked [or] you can’t come up with meaningful analysis.”

Tracy Siska, founder of the Chicago Justice Project, adds that errors in CPD data collection are common. He has found similar issues with data on how police officers respond to 911 calls. “It is an institutionalized problem,” he says. In 2022, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation revealed how half of murders considered “solved” by CPD did not result in an arrest, despite police officials publicly touting the high “clearance” number.

Chicago police data show clear racial discrepancies in missing person cases—but to understand why people go missing and how they are treated by police when they do, reporters dug much deeper to speak with current and former police officers, families of the missing and nationwide experts. This story is part of the Chicago Missing Persons project by City Bureau and the Invisible Institute, two nonprofit journalism organizations based in Chicago. Read the full investigation and see resources for families of the missing at chicagomissingpersons.com

JUSTICE

Delayed Missing Person Cases

Chicago police can’t ask for people to wait a day before filing a report—but they do.

BY TRINA REYNOLDS-TYLER, INVISIBLE INSTITUTE, AND SARAH CONWAY, CITY BUREAU

S

ome say it’s simply a mother’s intuition: a lump in the throat or a throb to the heart that warns their child is in danger, even when police suggest otherwise.

It guided Latonya Moore when her twenty-six-year-old daughter Shantieya Smith still wasn’t home as night fell May 28, 2018. It was out of character for her to not reach out, especially on a school night. Moore worried officers would be dismissive if she called in, so her cousin suggested they head to a nearby 10th District police station. “I wanted them to see my face so that they could understand my concern was real,” remembers Moore.

It guided her even as the officer at the front desk told her not to worry, she remembers. Maybe she is with a boyfriend, the officer suggested. It wasn’t uncommon for young women like Smith to run off with a man. “Give it forty-eight hours” before filing the report, Moore remembers the officer saying.

But Moore didn’t want to give it fortyeight hours. She thought about fifteenyear-old Sadaria Davis, another girl who had gone missing in the neighborhood that spring, who later was found decomposed in a trash-strewn abandoned building. It was the latest in a spate of missing women and girls; in fact, the whole neighborhood was on edge.

Moore’s cousin, part of their tightknit family group, was adamant the officer accept the report and said they would not leave the station without one. They mentioned Smith’s bipolar disorder, which—unknown to the family at the time—meant police could have immediately characterized her case as “atrisk” and started an investigation.

Finally, officers told Moore her request was accepted.

“If she shows up, give us a call,” officers told Moore. She wouldn’t hear from them for the next four days.

Tammy Pittman holds a portrait of her daughter, Shante Bonahan, who went missing in 2016. PHOTO BY NATASHA MOUSTACHE

I

n Illinois, it’s against state law for any law enforcement official to refuse an in-person missing person report on any grounds, regardless of the missing person’s age, affiliation, lifestyle or amount of time missing. Nowadays, the first 24 to 48 hours after someone goes missing are widely understood as the most vital part of a police investigation—critical to finding leads, collecting evidence and, in some cases, saving lives. The Chicago Police Department even collaborated with the network A&E on a show called “The First 48: Missing Persons,” showing (as research confirms) those crucial early hours can make or break a missing person case.

And yet, Moore clearly remembers an officer telling her to wait before filing a missing person report. City Bureau and the Invisible Institute spoke with multiple people who had similar experiences. In an analysis of police complaint records from 2011 to 2015, City Bureau and Invisible Institute found seventeen complaints against officers for allegedly refusing to file missing person reports. None of the officers named in these complaints were disciplined. Black women made a majority of the complaints against officers, often

when attempting to report their children missing.

Additionally, at least three complaints alleged that officers at stations where they tried to file a report in-person told them to instead call 911, even though Illinois law clearly states police cannot refuse inperson reports. One father, who asked to remain anonymous, told City Bureau and the Invisible Institute that police would not allow him to report his seventeenyear-old daughter missing in 2020 because police told him she was an adult and could move freely in the world.

“They were saying you have to wait forty-eight hours before you can actually report the person missing,” says the Rev. Robin Hood, who remembers hearing this from police officers starting in the 1990s.

The West Side activist preacher has raised awareness and led community searches for missing Black girls and women on the West Side for decades.

In response to this accusation, police spokesperson Thomas Ahern wrote in an email statement: “The Chicago Police Department takes each missing person report seriously and investigates every one consistently. Under state law, CPD is required to take every missing person report regardless of how long the person has been absent or who is submitting the report.”

In some cases, families believe if police had acted more urgently, their loved ones might still be alive. While it’s impossible to prove a hypothetical, these heartbreaking stories demonstrate how important urgent police response can be.

On July 24, 2016, Shante Bohanan called her sister and said she was being held against her will. Bohanan’s boyfriend had recently died in a shooting, and the twenty-year-old had gone to her boyfriend’s family’s house in order to grieve, family members told City Bureau and the Invisible Institute. A police document stated that during the phone call, Bohanan told her sister that she had

a “gun held to her head.”

Bohanan’s mother, Tammy Pittman, says she went to the boyfriend’s house herself the same evening, but residents of the home said Bohanan had already left.

Worried for her daughter’s safety, she attempted to report her missing.

Video: the love of a mother (Tammy) - Tammy Pittman talks about her experience with police after filing a missing person report for her daughter Shante Bohanan. (Video credits) Instead, officers suggested Bohanan had run away, and urged Pittman to wait another twenty-four hours before reporting her daughter missing, against state law and their own policy. Police did not search the boyfriend’s home until the next evening and they found nothing.

Three days after her mother first tried to file a missing person report, Bohanan’s naked body was found inside a black plastic garbage bag on 92nd Street in Burnside.

As of 2023, Pittman says she hasn’t heard from detectives in five years.

Ultimately, whether it’s a refused report, confusion about whether or not they can file a report, or a delay in investigation, the process leaves families in limbo as leads are lost and cases go cold.

“The police failed me,” Pittman says.

“Even though she’s dead, she’s gone, I don’t have no answers and that’s what hurts most of all. It hurts more than anything.”

Despite City Bureau and the Invisible Institute reaching out to the Chicago Police Department media affairs over the course of months to better understand the department’s data management and missing persons pipeline, department officials declined to be interviewed or to answer any specific questions about cases or data. This story is part of the Chicago Missing Persons project by City Bureau and the Invisible Institute, two nonprofit journalism organizations based in Chicago. Read the full investigation and see resources for families of the missing at chicagomissingpersons.com

DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

POLITICS

CEO Says Johnson’s 2024 Budget Includes ShotSpotter The mayor pledged to end the contract during his campaign.

BY JIM DALEY

M

ayor Brandon Johnson’s 2024 budget includes funding to continue the city’s use of ShotSpotter, a controversial gunshot-detection system owned by SoundThinking, according to Ralph Clark, the company’s CEO. Clark also expressed optimism to investors that the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) pilot of CrimeTracer, another SoundThinking product, will expand into the “mid or high six-figures” by the end of 2024. During his campaign, Johnson pledged to cancel the ShotSpotter contract.

In a quarterly earnings call last month, Clark noted that Johnson’s 2024 budget increased CPD’s funding despite calls by activists to reduce it. The budget “importantly also included funding for the continued use of acoustic gunshot detection technology,” Clark said. Johnson “has made the right decision, we believe, to increase the law enforcement budget,” he added, “and there is a specific line item in that budget calling for acoustic gunshot detection.”

The mayor’s proposed 2024 budget includes a line item for “Software Maintenance and Licensing” totaling $8,967,998, the same amount budgeted for 2023. Clark was apparently referring to that item.

SoundThinking reported a record revenue of $24 million, representing a 28 percent year-over-year increase, on the call. The company has been expanding in recent years by acquiring products like CrimeTracer, a law enforcement database and search engine SoundThinking bought in 2022. Clark told investors he was optimistic that a pilot program CPD has

with CrimeTracer will be expanded into “a mid- or high- six figure transaction in the latter half of 2024.”

In 2018, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel signed a three-year $33 million contract with the company, which uses microphone arrays to detect loud noises and a computer algorithm to determine whether they’re gunshots. In August 2022, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot quietly extended the contract through February 2024. In June, Johnson’s administration approved a $10.2 million payment for that extension; at the time a senior advisor said it was done by the Procurement Office without the mayor’s knowledge.

Activists have called on the city to cancel the contract for years. In 2021, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that fewer than ten percent of Shotspotter’s gunshot alerts led to evidence of a gun-related crime and that police showed a pattern of stopping and frisking people more often in areas they considered more prone to ShotSpotter alerts.

“ShotSpotter alerts rarely produce evidence of a gun-related crime, rarely give rise to investigatory stops, and even less frequently lead to the recovery of gun crime-related evidence during an investigatory stop,” the OIG’s report concluded.

SoundThinking’s stock plunged after Johnson won the mayoral runoff, losing more than thirty percent of its value in the days after. Johnson pledged to cancel the ShotSpotter contract during his campaign, and staffers, including a South Side field director, have been active in the movement to end the city’s use of the gunshotdetection technology. Since his election,

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

Johnson has declined to say whether he will extend the contract.

In a statement emailed to the Weekly, a spokesperson for the mayor wrote that “the future of the contract will be assessed” in February 2024, when the current contract expires. “It is currently budgeted for the remainder of the contract,” the statement added.

Clark noted on the earnings call that the budget still has to be formally adopted by the City Council and a new contract has yet to be inked. ”And so we’re going to wait and see what actually gets hopefully ultimately signed off on and finalized [in] the final budget, and we’ll be feeling a lot better about things,” Clark said. “And we’ll still have some gates to go through because then you have to kind of take those budget dollars and get them to a realized contract, which will have until mid-February to do, which is when our current contract with Chicago ends.”

On the call, Clark added that he was “delighted” by Larry Snelling’s recent appointment as CPD superintendent. “He kind of grew up in Chicago PD, he's been a very strong local defender of technology at large and specifically acoustic gunshot protection,” Clark said. “And so that's really, really quite encouraging.”

Snelling has not been shy about his admiration for technology-driven policing—last month he told Block Club’s Atavia Reed tech is “the number one way” to address crime—but when he’s been asked about ShotSpotter specifically, he has deferred to Mayor Johnson.

In a statement emailed to the Weekly by a spokesperson, Clark wrote, “SoundThinking has not been given any formal notification of Mayor Johnson’s

plans relating to the use of acoustic gunshot detection after the current term ending February 2024. We remain hopeful that the city will continue to use and leverage this technology that leads to improved law enforcement response to under-reported community gunfire that has been proven to save lives.”

Another product SoundThinking has acquired is PredPol, “predictive-policing” technology that strategy that has had its own share of controversy. Last month a joint investigation by Wired and The Markup found that less than 1 percent of the predictions made by PredPol for a police department in Plainfield, New Jersey were accurate. In 2021, The Verge reported that in 2013 a similar predictive policing approach CPD was then using resulted in a man being shot.

Freddy Martinez, the director of the digital transparency and research organization Lucy Parsons Labs (LPL) told the Weekly he’s troubled by the mixed messages coming from SoundThinking and the Johnson administration. Last month LPL released a statement criticizing Johnson’s proposed budget because, among other things, it did not reduce CPD’s funding.

“Money talks, and I think it’s really troubling to hear noncommittal statements from the mayor’s office,” Martinez said. “If we’re hearing the companies telling their investors that they think the contract will be renewed, then I think there’s a lot of reasons to be troubled.”

This story was originally published online November 7, 2023. Jim Daley is an investigative journalist and senior editor at the Weekly.

CLASSIFIED SERVICE DIRECTORY Section To place your ad, call: 1-773-358-3129 or email: malone@southsideweekly.com Ad copy deadline: 1:00 p.m. Friday before Thursday publication date

Public NoticeWanted003 Construction Help Request for Name Change This public notice is hereby given that there will be a court date at the request of Richard Matthew Reznick to change his/her/their name to Richard Matthew Ravenwood.

This court date will be held on February 15, 2024, at 1:30 p.m., at the State of Illinois Circuit Court, Cook County, 160 North LaSalle Street, Chicago IL 60601 via ZOOM. Case #2023CONC001761

Cleaning Service

070

Best Maids 708-599-7000 House Cleaning Services Family owned since 1999 www.bestmaids.com

Advertise in the South Side Weekly Today!!

083 Movers Help Wanted123 9VVÄUN 001

JO & RUTH REMODELING We Specialize in Vintage Homes and Restorations!

Painting, Power Washing, Deck Sealing, Brick Repair, Tuckpointing, Carpentry, Porch/Deck, Kitchen & Bath Remodeling. *Since 1982* 773-575-7220

Exterminators

088

=DS ¶(P 7UDS ¶(P Pest Control, LLC Residential and Commercial Pest Management Services offered: • Bug Spraying • Fumigation • Exterminator Services • Insect Control • Other Pest Control • Rodent Control & Removal • Termite Control CALL FOR FREE ESTIMATE: (773) 590-0622

MICHAEL MOVING We Move, Deliver, and Do Clean-Out Jobs 773.977.9000

Plastering

143

KELLY Plastering Co. Plaster Patching, Dryvit, Stucco.

FULLY INSURED. 815-464-0606

7S\TIPUN

The Plumbing Department Available for all of your residential plumbing needs.

Lic. & insured. Serving Chicago & Suburbs. Senior Discounts.

Call Jeff at 773-617-3686

Advertise in the South Side Weekly Today!!

001

CONRAD ROOFING CO. Specializing in Architectural Metal Work, Gutters & Downspouts, Bay Windows, &RUQLFHV 5RRÀQJ 6ODWH Clay Tile, Cedar, Shingles, Flat/Energy Star Roof 773-286-6212

(WHY[TLU[Z MVY 9LU[ *ONV Hyde Park Area 10 rooms, 3 BD/2BA. All appliances. Includes heat!

312-683-6237

Advertise in the South Side Weekly Today!!

Let Us Help Build Your Business!

Advertise in the Business & Service Directory Today!!

Ad copy deadline: 1:00 p.m. Friday before Thursday publication date.

To Place your ad, call:

773-358-3129 or email:

malone@southsideweekly.com

BUSINESS & SERVICE SHOWCASE:

708-599-7000 House Cleaning Services

Family owned since 1999

-2 587+ MICHAEL MOVING 5(02'(/,1* *HQHUDO &RQWUDFWRUV COMPANY )DPLO\ 2ZQHG 6LQFH Moving, Delivery and Cleanout Jobs

Serving Hyde Park and surrounding communities

773-977-9000

4`^a]VeV CV^`UV]Z_X DVcgZTVd :WLJPHSPZ[Z PU! ࠮ =PU[HNL /VTLZ 9LZ[VYH[PVUZ ࠮ 2P[JOLUZ )H[OZ ࠮ )HZLTLU[Z ࠮ ,SLJ[YPJ 7S\TIPUN ࠮ >HSS -SVVY ;PSL ࠮ 7HPU[PUN *HYWLU[Y`

:H :RUN :LWK <RX 7R 0HHW <RXU 1HHGV

www.bestmaids.com

PICTURE YOUR BUSINESS HERE! Advertise in the Business & Service Directory today!!

CLEANING -

PEST CONTROL -

708-599-7000 Residential and Commercial House Cleaning Services

Family owned since 1999

www.bestmaids.com

CONSTRUCTION -

Residential Plumbing Service

࠮ )\N :WYH`PUN ࠮ -\TPNH[PVU ࠮ ,_[LYTPUH[VY :LY]PJLZ ࠮ 0UZLJ[ *VU[YVS ࠮ 6[OLY 7LZ[ *VU[YVS ࠮ 9VKLU[ *VU[YVS 9LTV]HS ࠮ ;LYTP[L *VU[YVS

Plumbing • Drain Cleaning • Sewer Camera/Locate Water Heater Installation/Repair Service • Tankless Water Heater Installation/Repair Service Toilet Repair • Faucet/Fixture Repair Vintage Faucet/Fixture Repair • Ejector/Sump Pump • Garbage Disposals • Battery Back-up Systems

Services offered:

CALL FOR FREE ESTIMATE:

SERVICES INCLUDE:

Licensed & Insured • Serving Chicago & Suburbs

10% OFF Senior Citizen Discount

(773) 590-0622 Call 773-617-3686

KELLY

)DPLO\ 2ZQHG 6LQFH PLASTERING CO.

4`^a]VeV CV^`UV]Z_X DVcgZTVd PLASTER PATCHING DRYVIT :WLJPHSPZ[Z PU! STUCCO ࠮ =PU[HNL /VTLZ 9LZ[VYH[PVUZ ࠮ 2P[JOLUZ )H[OZ ࠮ )HZLTLU[Z ࠮ ,SLJ[YPJ 7S\TIPUN ࠮ >HSS -SVVY ;PSL ࠮ 7HPU[PUN *HYWLU[Y`

of Illinois Inc.

Pest Management

-2 587+ PLASTERING 5(02'(/,1* *HQHUDO &RQWUDFWRUV

ROOFING Conrad Roofing Co.

PLUMBING -

FULLY INSURED

(815) 464-0606

License #: 058-197062

SPECIALIZING IN ARCHITECTURAL: METAL WORK:

• Cornices • Bay Windows • Ornaments • Gutters & Downspouts • Standing & Flat Seam Roofs

ROOFING WORK:

• Slate • Clay Tile • Cedar • Shingles • Flat/Energy Star Roof

(773) 286-6212

ZZZ FRQUDGURRÀQJ FRP

HELP YOUR BUSINESS GROW!

Advertise in the South Side Weekly’s Business & Service Directory today!! email: malone@southsideweekly.com

HELP YOUR

BUSINESS GROW! MOVING :H :RUN :LWK <RX 7R 0HHW <RXU 1HHGV

MICHAEL MOVING COMPANY Moving, Delivery and Cleanout Jobs

Serving Hyde Park and surrounding communities

773-977-9000

Advertise in the South Side Weekly’s Business & Service Directory. Call today!

1-773-358-3129 email: malone@southsideweekly.com DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

Register

Enroll in Park Kids

after school program!

for Winter

Programs & Events at the Chicago Park District!

Online registration opens December 4 & 5.

In-person registration begins December 9.

Winter Programs session runs January 8 to March 24.

For more information about your Chicago Park District, visit www.ChicagoParkDistrict.com or call 312.742.7529.

Are you 55 and Older Caring for a Child Under 18 or Loved One (19-59) with a Disability?

Low L ow Down Down Payments.

Payments.

Countless Solutions.

Solutions.

Countless Great S ervice.

Great Service.

Grandparents or Older Relatives Raising Children Program FREE support services include: Education & Training: Learn about literacy, and strategies to support the emotional and educational development of the child.

Gap-Filling Funds: Help buying essential items like school supplies, technology, uniforms, furniture, clothes, after-school or summer camp fees.

One-on-One Counseling: Discuss self-care, decision-making, and ways to cope with stress when feeling overwhelmed with the challenges of raising children unexpectedly.

Support Groups: Share your stories, challenges, & successes caring for your loved ones.

Contact the DFSS Senior Services Division Information and Assistance Unit aging@cityofchicago.org • (312) 744-4016

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

DFSS

Department of Family and Support Services

15 YR FIXED: 5.990% | 6.102% APR* 30 YR FIXED: 6.750% | 6.820% APR* Contact us today for your FREE mortgage consultation!

630-324-5799

Rates current as of 12/01/2023 and based on a $320,000 loan for the purchase/rate-and-term refinance of an owner-occupied single family home with an 80% loan-to-value and a borrower FICO score of 760. Contact your DKMC loan officer for current rates. Interest rates and annual percentage rates (APRs) are estimates and not to be construed as exact quotes but a reasonable approximation for informational purposes only, are subject to change without notice and may be subject to pricing adjustors related to property type, loan amount, loan-to-value, credit score and other variables. Actual APR may differ depending on borrower’s credit history and loan characteristics. Other programs are available based on the individual needs of the applicant. This information does not constitute a loan approval or commitment and is not an invitation to extend credit as defined by section 226.2 of Regulation Z. All information presented is subject to change, and all programs are subject to Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corp.’s underwriting guidelines.

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY * annual percentage rate Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corp. (NMLS ID # 2551 (www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org) IL:MB.0004263) an Illinois Residential Mortgage Licensee located at 1431 Opus Place, Suite 200, Downers Grove, IL 60515. Telephone 630-376-2100. Regulated by IDFPR located at 100 West Randolph, 9th Floor, Chicago, IL 60601. Telephone 312-814-4500. © 2023 Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corp. All Rights Reserved. 04600-115 12/2023.

OPINION

Op-Ed: Police Budgets Have Grown for Decades—Time to Rein Them In

What’s in the 2024 CPD budget—and how did we get to almost $2 billion for police in the first place?

BY ASHA RANSBY-SPORN

T

he Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) budget has taken up more than a third of the city’s general operating budget, or “corporate fund,” for decades. During the administrations of our three previous mayors, a status quo of privatizing and cutting funding for other public institutions has been complemented by a steady increase in funding for police.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2024 budget is increasing CPD’s funding again. The budget, which was released in October and passed 41–8 by the City Council on November 28, includes some steps forward around funding alternatives to police for mental health and youth violence prevention. But it also raises CPD’s budget to almost $2 billion, a 2.8 percent increase from 2023.

Since at least 2014, a re-energized movement against police violence has brought specific attention to the size of CPD’s budget compared to that of other needed city programs. In 2020, that movement was influential enough that six socialist alderpeople co-wrote a Sun-Times op-ed arguing that “cutting funding for police could lead to a better and safer Chicago.” And now, those six alderpeople have multiplied in their ranks of somewhat like-minded representatives in City Council, we’ve elected a mayor who ran on an approach to public safety that centers around “investing in people,” and the narrative around police and resources has shifted dramatically.

Still, we’re not seeing cuts to the police budget.

The saying that budgets are moral documents may be true, but it is equally true that they are political documents— reflections of where there is power and

where there is political will. And there is always some power behind the status quo by virtue of it being entrenched. Changes to the status quo, however, require both power in the form of organized pressure from communities and social movements, as well as political will on the part of decision-makers. Chicagoans have become familiar with (and found many ways to push back against) the political idea that the city doesn’t have enough money to fund the things we need, but consistently—even when horrible police abuses are uncovered—the city has found money to fund and grow the police department. Why is this so and what does it tell us about the power of everyday people to shape the decisions that impact our lives and about the political will of the people who make those decisions on our behalf?

When Richard M. Daley took office as Chicago’s mayor in 1989, CPD’s budget was $541 million (the equivalent of roughly $1.3 billion in 2023). As the so-called War on Drugs had been underway for nearly two decades, Daley entered office in Chicago at a time when an overall approach of harsh criminal punishment and increased policing as primary ways to address social problems in Black communities went largely unchallenged in the mainstream.

Daley himself had a history of turning a blind eye to police abuses. In 1982, while serving as as Cook County State’s Attorney, he was informed by the police superintendent about a clear case of brutal police torture. Daley ignored the alarming report and spent much of that decade overseeing a prosecutor’s office that convicted countless predominantly Black men based on coerced confessions.

Under his mayorship, CPD commander Jon Burge’s horrific program of torture continued largely unchecked.

Also as Daley came to power in Chicago, neoliberalism—the idea that we should shrink the role of the government, in order to allow the capitalist free market to prevail and “trickle down”—was taking hold as the dominant economic policy across the political spectrum in the U.S. Daley put this into practice by privatizing the public sector and divesting from Black, Brown and working-class parts of the city. Daley demolished high-rise public housing and failed to deliver on promises that it would be sufficiently replaced; began slowly closing public schools and making way for privately-run charters; sold off public infrastructure to create short-term revenue but longterm debt to private companies (like in the case of the widely criticized 2009 parking meter deal); and created the city’s Tax Increment Financing (TIF) funds, sometimes referred to as “slush funds,” that have been used as a way to siphon public dollars toward private development projects.

The result was that inequality grew enormously during Daley’s tenure, particularly along the lines of race, and CPD was one of few, if not the only, public institution(s) left fully funded and growing. From 1990 to 2012, roughly the years Daley was in office, average white household income grew to be double that of Black household income in Chicago.

And over the course of Daley’s six terms as mayor, the CPD budget grew from taking up 36.2 percent of the corporate fund to a full 43 percent in his last budget before retiring in 2011.

In her book Becoming Abolitionists,

human rights lawyer and organizer Derecka Purnell writes: “Police manage inequality by keeping the dispossessed from the owners, the Black from the white, the homeless from the housed, the beggars from the employed.” There is extensive research (and common sense narratives) to support the idea that investment in the form of jobs programs, community spaces, and housing reduces violence in a community, but those things require public investment in the same programs that combat inequality. These are the kinds of holistic public safety policies and investments that would be most effective but get in the way of neoliberal policy-makers’ emphasis on letting profit incentives drive the economy. So instead of investing in what makes communities safe on the frontend, neoliberal political leaders invest in police to show up in communities already bound to be unsafe by virtue of their disparate lack of resources.

Taking office in 2011, former mayor Rahm Emanuel continued to advance a similar economic agenda as Daley.

Emanuel’s efforts were accomplished via shocking and immediate blows that have become symbols of Chicago’s divestment from the public sector and the working class. Rather than slowly shutting down public mental health clinics, Emanuel closed half of the city’s twelve clinics all in his very first budget, and later closed fifty public schools simultaneously in the largest mass school closure in U.S. history.

Through privatization, Emanuel paved the way for cutting thousands of unionized public sector jobs and replacing them with lower-paying or part-time jobs staffed by contractors. This was another way neoliberal policy fueled economic

DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

OPINION

precarity among the same groups of people—Black and working-class—most likely to experience police violence and criminalization.

Emanuel was also not so different from Daley when it came to addressing police abuses. He actively concealed a video of the murder of teenager Laquan McDonald, who was shot sixteen times by then-CPD officer Jason Van Dyke.

Only once a court ordered the city to release the gut-wrenching dash cam footage of the murder, did the public see it. And only once there was an outpouring of protest and outrage, did Emanuel take any further action.

Emanuel increased the police budget every year he was in office (from 2011 to 2019), maintained its share of about 43 percent of the city’s corporate fund, and championed the investment of more than $95 million into the construction of a fancy new police academy that is now operating on the West Side.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and millions more Americans were impacted by the lack of a social safety net than before, the viral video of police officers killing George Floyd in Minneapolis (combined with myriad other social factors) sent Chicago, like many cities, into a wave of protest and unrest. Calls to “defund the police” were both galvanizing and incredibly polarizing, but at the heart of the statement was actually a profoundly common political opinion.

That year, a city-administered budget survey showed that 87 percent of nearly 38,000 Chicagoans who responded wanted to see the city reallocate police funds toward other needed city services and institutions like the libraries, schools, and the department of public health.

(Most people have a much more diverse vision of what they believe deserves funding than what our actual budget reflects.) Regardless, when federal COVID relief dollars came in, and while many Chicagoans and local businesses continued to struggle from pandemic shutdowns, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot put $281.5 million of that federal funding toward CPD. Much of it paid for overtime pay for officers assigned to police protests.

Over the course of Lightfoot’s one

term as mayor, the police budget increased from $1.76 billion to $1.94 billion, although its overall share of the city’s corporate fund declined from 39.9 percent to 35.8 percent. She will, however, always be remembered to many Chicagoans as the mayor who raised bridges, trapping youth protesters downtown in May 2020, and gave COVID relief money to fund police overtime while many families and neighborhoods struggled.

When Johnson started his run for mayor, his “root-cause” approach won him cautious support from a large swath of the city’s abolitionist and police reform movements (myself very much included), and was also used against him in countless attacks from his opponents.

Initially, Johnson campaign commitments included reallocating $150 million from CPD, funding a yearround youth jobs program as another violence prevention measure, canceling the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, an acoustic gunshot-detection technology, and closing the notorious Homan Square police detention facility. To the dismay of some early supporters and in a context of near constant attacks and fear-mongering around crime, Johnson later promised “not to cut one penny” from CPD’s budget. Regardless of his official stances, Johnson was branded a “defund” candidate, which gained him both supporters and opponents. He was understood to be someone who was planning to invest in young people and not more cops and, notably, he still won more than 80 percent in every majorityBlack ward in Chicago.

Johnson and an increasingly polarized City Council have inherited a police force that makes up about a third of the city’s workforce and a landscape of public institutions that have been systematically privatized and underfunded. So what does the 2024 police budget tell us about where there is power and where there is political will?

Overall, the mayor’s budget shows some effort and intention to take a different approach to public safety, but maintains the behemoth CPD budget.

Outside of the police budget, we see a $15 million increase in funding for mental health services which will allow

24 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

the city to expand the Treatment Not Trauma (TNT) model for non-police crisis response that will send mental health workers instead of cops to crises and funding to re-open two new public mental health centers. In a statement, TNT campaign leaders applauded the investment and pledged to “fight until everyone in every neighborhood has the accessible, police-free, quality mental health care that we deserve,” affirming that they will continue to fight for more.

And the budget earmarks funding for an added 4,000 youth jobs, some of which is promised to go toward piloting GoodKids MadCity’s Peacebook proposal. The Peacebook would set up neighborhood peace commissions in areas most impacted by gun violence and pay young people to be peacekeepers, training them in violence interruption, mediation and restorative justice skills. The details of this are yet to be determined as the Peacebook Ordinance continues to move through City Council.

That’s to name a few of many places we see this type of investment in next year’s budget.

Nevertheless, a $55 million increase brings the CPD budget up to $1.99 billion (from $1.94 billion this year) and fails to advance an interconnected process of diverting resources away from policing under-resourced communities and resourcing them instead. While that $1.99 billion now makes up 35 percent (the lowest share of the corporate fund CPD has accounted for since before Daley was in office), it is still a much, much bigger share than what surveyed Chicagoans say they’d like to see when compared to things like public health or community services.

Salary increases, a $60 million grant for policing connected to next summer’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and some added positions all contribute to the net CPD budget increase. Overall, there are a similar number of total positions in the police department, but some notable changes in what those positions are. There are 833 fewer standard police officer positions, a number of promotions of officers to “middle management” positions that make higher salaries but spend less time

patrolling, and the 400 new civilian positions across the department that the mayor has widely celebrated as part of his intention to bring “civilianization” to the police force. What that means is creating more jobs inside of CPD that are not sworn police officers with guns and arresting power. In this budget, that includes doubling the staff inside the department’s Office of Community Policing with more community organizer positions and domestic violence advocates. It also includes added staffing for the Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform tasked with monitoring compliance with the federal consent decree.

It is important here to distinguish between what is being called “civilianization” (which still grows the police department) as different from visions for civilianization that are about redistributing police officer responsibilities to other workers and departments. An emphasis on the latter, which could look like a more visionary and sizable investment in jobs that support public safety outside of the police department, would instead be a stronger approach and reflect a meaningful shift in who is understood to be doing the work of keeping us safe. Treatment Not Trauma offers one good example of this. Domestic violence leaders have also spoken up about how the new advocate positions would better support survivors if housed outside of the police department. Instead of adding more positions to CPD, we could look at the current 1,500 vacant police officer positions and increased budget for CPD recruitment and put those funds toward other kinds of jobs in other departments that address the root causes of violence and other social problems.

On top of to what’s now baked into next year’s CPD budget, which includes $1.1 billion in Fraternal Order of Police contract position salaries, future budgets will be locked into delivering a 16 to 20 percent raise to CPD officers over the next four years if the city’s tentative agreement with the FOP is approved

by City Council. There’s also still a line item for the city’s current contract with ShotSpotter that is up in February.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

Whether it gets renewed will be another important decision point around police funding. If the contract is not renewed, it is important that the funding stream isn’t redirected to another harmful surveillance technology.

Organizers across the city have been advocating for an approach that sees community investment as going hand-inhand with the reallocation of funds away from the police department, which is itself responsible for so much violence. What we can interpret from the 2024 budget is that there is now enough power from the movement and from communities to successfully win investment in non-police approaches to public safety and crisis, but still not yet enough power or political will to take funding away from the police department.

Chicago movements have worked hard to diagnose and expose the problem of excessive police funding, having opened up a dramatically different public

conversation about safety and police funding, built creative programs that serve as alternatives to police all across the city, and worked to create the conditions in which a lot more is possible than just a few years ago. As we look to future budgets, it is on those same movements to grow our power through organizing and leverage political will toward solutions that invest in the wide-range of needs our communities have in order to be safe. Asha Ransby-Sporn is a Chicago-based organizer and writer. She worked as South Side Field Director for United Working Families’ field program for Brandon Johnson and their slate of progressive aldermanic candidates, and has organized specifically to cut police budgets with various groups for years.

No Cop Academy: The Documentary Screens to Enthusiastic Audience Support

The film chronicles efforts by Black and brown teenagers in 2017-2019 to stop the controversial police academy and the lessons organizers learned.

BY MAX BLAISDELL

H

ow will you show up the next time your municipality tries to ram through a proposal without community input under the cover of darkness?” asked an unnamed narrator as No Cop Academy: The Documentary concluded. “Will you boldly say no in the same way that No Cop Academy did?

Will you organize your communities to fight?”

When the credits rolled after a screening of the documentary on a chilly Monday evening in October, the audience gave a standing ovation and burst into a spontaneous cheer. Cries of “We love you!

We, we, love you!” resounded through the auditorium at Malcolm X College.

Directed by Caullen Hudson, a Chicago-based filmmaker and community organizer, and produced by Soapbox, his local production company, the film shows how a small but committed core of organizers steadily built support for their cause.

“We found it important and necessary to not only capture what happened during the eighteen-month campaign but put it in political and emotional context,” Hudson said.

After the screening, Destiny Harris, one of the organizers featured in the film, ran up to the podium to lead an impromptu

repeat-after-me: “Set My People Free!”

“I’m Letting My People Know!” “I Love You Like You Were Me!” All the infectious youthful energy and righteous anger depicted in the film was encapsulated in that very moment.

No Cop Academy chronicles the campaign that tried, but ultimately failed, to shelve former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s controversial plan to build a multimilliondollar police and fire academy on the West Side. On the border of the Humboldt and West Garfield Park neighborhoods, the academy opened its doors in January.

Though the original price tag of the academy was projected at $95 million, which was cited in the campaign’s principal rallying cry, “No Cop Academy, 95 million for community,” the final tally ballooned to $128 million after an additional $33 million was designated for a mock neighborhood.

“I think this is a win-win for the city of Chicago,” Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) told Block Club Chicago at the academy’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. “Took a lot of bruises, but they were worth it.”

Through interviews with the tightknit group of organizers and up-close, on-the-ground footage from numerous demonstrations they led in and around City Hall, the film portrays how a movement largely led and composed of Black and

DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 25

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

brown teenagers went to bat against some of the most powerful figures in Chicago—the mayor, City Council, and the police—and shamed them for supporting a project that the majority of people in the communities surrounding the development had not heard of and did not support once they did.

The film documents how organizers cannily deployed a creative array of nonviolent tactics to slow down and disrupt the process, from getting a sitting alderperson to postpone a key hearing so that organizers had time to rally their supporters to City Hall in protest, to directly confronting Emanuel and Mitts at restaurants and event halls.

Although the campaign mostly spanned the years 2017 to 2019, from when Emanuel first put forward a plan for the academy to when City Council ultimately approved funding for it, the film traces its genesis to Emanuel’s decision more than a decade ago to shut down six mental health clinics and over fifty schools across many of the city’s already disinvested Black and brown neighborhoods.

When she joined the #NoCopAcademy campaign, Harris was a teenager living in West Garfield Park and attending Whitney Young High School.

The campaign organizers invited young people like her to an art-making event held at a school on the West Side. Many quickly became friends over their shared beliefs. They grew even closer at a retreat at the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee, famed as a hub for civil rights, labor, and environmental activists to gather and strategize.

“The first time I ever went outside of the city of Chicago was through No Cop Academy on the Tennessee trip [to Highlander],” said Yolanda J., another youth organizer on the panel. “I got to be with people like me, people that thought the same, people that were just as radicalized, but our radicalized thoughts were just normal.”

Several turned into committed police abolitionists. For Jennifer Nava and the other panelists, that means making investments in public housing, mental health facilities, and education, which they say will truly help people stay safe, using funds from the $1.78 billion Chicago Police Department (CPD) budget.

Youth organizers speak at panel at Malcolm X College

“When we break down those institutions, we plant seeds that grow and flourish into things that nurture us,” Nava said. “And that [brings] life in abundance and love and joy.”

Photo by Max Blaisdell

shit we actually won.”

The organizers also discovered the power of their own voices, regardless of their youth.

“One of the biggest things that

“We found it important and necessary to not only capture what happened during the eighteenmonth campaign but put it in political and emotional context,” Hudson said.

Despite frustration at the new police academy opening this year, none of the organizers who spoke on the panel recalled the campaign as a failure. Instead, they viewed it as a learning experience to draw from for subsequent campaigns, such as the one that pressured Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to cut its contract with CPD and allow local school councils to remove their school resource officers, police assigned to patrol schools.

“A lot of people who organized with No Cop Academy went on to organize with Cops Out of CPS,” Harris said. “That

26 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023

I learned through being a part of the campaign is that one, they scared of us, and two, we have hella power, bro, like…we were able to get over 100 organizations to back up us young people,” Harris said. “Age is not a factor. These aldermen, they love to be like, ‘Oh, they just some young kids, they don’t know what they talking about’… like we know, like we talked to the people of the community, y’all didn’t.”

On the campaign trail, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot opposed the proposal on technical grounds, saying that more community engagement was needed,

but ultimately agreed that a new training facility was required. Her decision to build upon Emanuel’s plan once elected was one of the many reasons organizers threw their support behind outsider mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson in 2023, who went on to defeat her and win the run-off election against Paul Vallas.

Ultimately, the youth organizers see the #NoCopAcademy campaign as a wellspring of inspiration from which they and others will draw for years to come.

“To see what’s going on now, with like Stop Cop City [in Atlanta] and Defund [CPD], and just abolition in general, it’s just so beautiful,” Harris said.

For Hudson, the campaign helped illuminate how these organizing efforts can be personal, local, and global all at the same time. “The sooner we recognize these struggles as connected, the better we can collectively organize against these violent projects and for life-affirming institutions and economies,” he said.

In 2021, local activists and ecologists in Atlanta uncovered a plan by the Atlanta Police Federation to build a massive police training facility in southwest Dekalb County on the site of an old prison farm.

To try to halt this development, they have staged a series of mass demonstrations, protested at the Atlanta City Council, and obtained 100,000 petition signatures calling for a ballot referendum on whether construction should proceed.

Activists in Atlanta remain hopeful they can still stop the development with a vote, and the fight in Chicago imparts that, even if their efforts fail, the campaign would not have been in vain.

“All of this is part of a story of how do you lose, and how do you lose in ways that are actually really powerful,” said Page May, founder of Assata’s Daughters, towards the end of the documentary. “One step of that is that you ground yourself in history and recognize, like, we come from people who have lost over and over and over again, and yet somehow so many things [get] better.” Max Blaisdell is a fellow with the Invisible Institute and a staff writer for the Hyde Park Herald.

cūĿŠ ūƭƑ ŏƭƙƥĿČĚȹIJūČƭƙĚēȡ ŞƭŕƥĿȹIJîĿƥĺ ČūŞŞƭŠĿƥNj ĺĿČîijū ¹ĺĚūŕūijĿČîŕ ¬ĚŞĿŠîƑNj ūIJIJĚƑƙ î DŽîƑĿĚƥNj ūIJ ČūƭƑƙĚƙ ēĚƙĿijŠĚē ƥū ČĺîŕŕĚŠijĚȡ ĿŠƥƑĿijƭĚȡ îŠē ĚNJƎŕūƑĚ ƙƭċŏĚČƥƙ ƙƭČĺ îƙ ċĿċŕĿČîŕ ƙƥƭēĿĚƙȡ ĿŠƥĚƑƑĚŕĿijĿūƭƙ ĚŠijîijĚŞĚŠƥȡ ƑîČĚ îŠē ijĚŠēĚƑ ŏƭƙƥĿČĚȡ IJūƑŞĿŠij ŕĚîēĚƑƙ ƑĚîēNj ƥū ƥîŒĚ ūŠ ƥūēîNjɄƙ Şūƙƥ ƎƑĚƙƙĿŠij ĿƙƙƭĚƙȦ

ČîēĚŞĿČ ƭƑƑĿČƭŕƭŞ ȹ Ǯ 'ĿIJIJĚƑĚŠƥ 'ĚijƑĚĚ ¡ƑūijƑîŞƙ ȹ /îƙNj ¹ū ¹ƑîŠƙIJĚƑ ƑĚēĿƥƙ ȹ GĿŠîŠČĿîŕ Ŀē DŽîĿŕîċŕĚ ȹ sĚDž ¹ƑĿȹ¹ĚƑŞ GūƑŞîƥ

¬¹ ¤¹ Þ~À¤ c~À¤s/Þ ¹~' Þ ūŠƥîČƥ ƭƙ ƥū ŕĚîƑŠ ŞūƑĚ ʁ îƎƎŕNjȦ

ČƥƙîēŞĿƙƙĿūŠƙȦūƑij ¹¬

DECEMBER 7, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 27

The University of Chicago Medicine has proudly offered expert obstetric and gynecological care on the city’s South Side. From helping grow families, to managing health issues such as fibroids and providing support through menopause, UChicago Medicine has been there for you every step of the way and that will never change.

Duchsoiss Center for Advanced Medicine 5758 S. Maryland Ave. Chicago • Hyde Park 1-888-824-0200 • UChicagoMedicine.org/Womens-Health

28 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 7, 2023