SSW 02.05.20

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Blackstone Bicycle Works

50 YEARS OF PARTICIPATORY COMMUNITY MEDIA

Weekly Bike Sale Every Saturday at 12pm

A people’s history of American social movements, political struggles and cultural awakenings, as told by the communities who experienced them

Wide selection of refurbished bikes! (most bikes are between $120 & $250)

41 short documentaries | 6 nights 15 organizers, scholars, media makers | FREE

Jan 16, Jan 30, Feb 20 @Logan Center for the Arts

Feb 6, Feb 27, Mar 12 @Green Line Performing Arts Center arts.uchicago.edu/apl AND INFO filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu

FILM STUDIES CENTER

SPARK Grant Program The SPARK Grant is an award opportunity for visual artists who identify as ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Native American), an artist with acute financial need, an artist with a disability, or as a self-taught/ non-formally trained artist.

The SPARK Grant offers 25, unrestricted awards of $2,000 to Chicagobased contemporary artists.

This program is generously funded by the Joyce Foundation.

Application deadline: February 16, 2020 For more information, eligibility requirements, and the application call (312) 491-8888 x1004, or visit: https://chicagoartistscoalition.org/resources/cac-grants/spark-microgrants

follow us at @blackstonebikes blackstonebikes.org

Blackstone Bicycle Works is a bustling community bike shop that each year empowers over 200 boys and girls from Chicago’s south side—teaching them mechanical skills, job skills, business literacy and how to become responsible community members. In our year-round ‘earn and learn’ youth program, participants earn bicycles and accessories for their work in the shop. In addition, our youths receive after-school tutoring, mentoring, internships and externships, college and career advising, and scholarships.

Hours Tuesday - Friday 1pm - 6pm 12pm - 5pm Saturday

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Volume 7, Issue 10 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Managing Editors Martha Bayne Sam Joyce Sam Stecklow Deputy Editor Jasmine Mithani Senior Editors Julia Aizuss, Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen, Christopher Good, Rachel Kim, Emeline Posner, Adam Przybyl, Olivia Stovicek Politics Editor Jim Daley Education Editor Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Michelle Anderson Music Editor Atavia Reed Literature Editor Dvon Clark Stage & Screen Editor Nicole Bond Visual Arts Editor Rod Sawyer Nature Editor Sam Joyce Food & Land Editor AV Benford Sarah Fineman Contributing Editors Mira Chauhan, Joshua Falk, Lucia Geng, Carly Graf, Robin Vaughan, Jocelyn Vega, Tammy Xu, Jade Yan Data Editor Radio Exec. Producer Social Media Editors Maya Holt

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Cover by Shane Tolentino

IN CHICAGO IN THIS A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors

City designates $11.5 million to address street violence—but is it even enough?

Mayor Lightfoot's administration is currently accepting proposals, due February 20, for an umbrella organization to coordinate the implementation of neighborhood-specific violence reduction programs in partnership with dozens of community groups. There are similar, privately-funded models already in place, like READI, CRED, Communities Partnering 4 Peace, and Metropolitan Family Services. Outreach workers for some of those organizations say the city actually needs to invest $50 million a year, like Los Angeles, New York, and other comparable cities, to make a dent in the steady trend of street violence in Chicago. “Nine million dollars to work with all the individuals who are at the highest risk of violence is really nothing,” said Eddie Bocanegra of READI, who chaired a transition committee on public safety for Lightfoot. “I don’t think it’s going to help much in sustaining the programs that the private philanthropic community has already invested in.” Local and state taxpayers spent about $3 billion coping with Chicago’s gun violence in 2018, according to an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group for CRED. Big plans for Woodlawn The University of Chicago recently purchased Woodlawn’s Jewel-Osco for almost $20 million after finding out it was for sale in order to “ensure that it remains locally controlled," they said. The supermarket, which just opened last March to much fanfare, is the neighborhood’s first full-service grocery store in decades, and nothing much should change about that, at least for now. The broker, Greenstone Partners, touted its “captive audience of shoppers from the University of Chicago’s main Hyde Park campus” in its promotional materials—no mention of the 23,000 or so native residents of Woodlawn, but okay.

Also last week, the city released the Woodlawn Development Plan, which consolidated a series of past studies on the neighborhood's assets and potential for development. The city owns twenty-seven percent of the vacant land in Woodlawn, and the plan recommends that it sells the majority to developers, who would build mixed-income housing. The city is expecting for the Obama Center and "continued investment" by the UofC to create about 2,000 permanent jobs and attract commercial development to major corridors like King Drive, Cottage Grove, Stony Island, and 63rd Street. However, plans to mitigate displacement and gentrification around the Obama Center remain elusive; 20th Ward Alderman Jeanette Taylor lambasted City Hall for its watered-down version of the Community Benefits Agreement ordinance she and 5th Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston put forward for the area.

A national spotlight on Chicago's 1969 Rainbow Coalition All eyes are on Chicago right now, as PBS's new documentary The First Rainbow Coalition—not to be mistaken for the Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH—debuts in screens across the country (you can also stream it on the PBS website). The film demonstrates how our city was once the epicenter of a radicalized multi-racial movement that was ahead of its time. Led by slain Black Panther Fred Hampton, community and street-based groups worked in unison to protest displacement in Lincoln Park spurred in part by an expanding DePaul University campus, confront police brutality, oppose the Vietnam War, and strive for neighborhood self-determination in spite of, not because of, the city's plans for them. The parallels between that struggle and today's most pressing issues in Black and Brown neighborhoods are striking. Does Chicago have a semblance of a rainbow coalition today? And if not, what would it take?

ISSUE

democratizing mental health

A decade ago, aldermen unanimously supported closures of public mental health clinics; by 2019, many in the City Council were adamantly opposed. What changed? dani adams.........................................4 what happened to the mental health task force?

“There’s a lot of good people whose opinion should be taken into consideration when we’re making decisions about funding and quality.” jim daley............................................8 the future of public mental health?

Chicago’s new public health commissioner in her own words jim daley............................................9 modeling for success

“The students intentionally model fashionably cool, casual streetwear and clothing that is unapologetically Black.” bridget vaughn...............................11 wanted: ways to boost the profile of local school councils

“It is the only democracy we have within the education system in Chicago.” marie fazio......................................14 going deep

“I’m not a big deal. I’m just a person trying to save the world.” scott pemberton............................15 census spotlight

Getting out the count in Chinatown tammy xu.........................................16 who built house

“We have come to hear the gospel of Frankie Knuckles, the godfather of house music.” jeremy paul saxon maldonado.....18 political cartoon

Artist debut in the South Side Weekly eric j. garcia....................................20

FEBRUARY 5, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Democratizing Mental Health

BY DANI ADAMS

I

n 2011, when then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposed a budget that closed half of the public mental health clinics in Chicago, City Council passed it unanimously. Less than a decade later, a progressive caucus in the council helped stall the confirmation of Dr. Allison Arwady, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s choice for commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH), citing concerns over her past statements regarding the closures. That sea change in political attitudes was the result of shifting public opinion driven by the tireless efforts of activists, advocates, and mental health providers. But the clinics remain closed, and the battle is far from over.

T

he modern era of mental health delivery in the United States can be traced to 1963, when President John F. Kennedy passed the Community Mental Health Act (CMHA). The act aimed to reduce the population in the nation’s psychiatric institutions—which offered few opportunities for constructive activities or therapy, let alone recovery—by half, and federal funding incentivized states and municipalities to create a robust system 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 5, 2020

How advocates put access to public mental health services back on the table of community mental health agencies.

In response, Chicago opened a system of nineteen public mental health centers that spanned nearly the entire city over a fifteenyear period.

Today, five of these public clinics remain. Operated by CDPH, they are financed through a mix of federal, state, and city dollars, in contrast to privately operated community mental health centers, which also sprang up in high numbers after the passage of the CMHA. The city-run public mental health clinics have always served the city’s most marginalized individuals. Unlike privately operated community mental health centers (even nonprofit ones), city-run clinics have a mandate to serve everyone, including those whom private clinics may turn away for lack of ability to pay or due to the severity of their illness. This makes them a safety net for low-income patients who are not eligible for Medicaid and/or Medicare (including the undocumented). Privately operated mental health centers generally do not gain patient revenue from these individuals, so they have little incentive to accept them as clients.

CDPH representatives often point to Federally Qualified Health

Centers (FQHCs), which receive federal funding and are also mandated to serve undocumented and uninsured individuals, as an alternative to city-run public mental health clinics. Advocates disagree. “There is a real limit to what [FQHCs] can do,” said Patrick Brosnan, the executive director of the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council.

Brosnan said FQHCs have thin financial margins and lack flexibility to provide services that are not reimbursable by Medicaid for free. “In order to get funded, you need to have a diagnosis, you need to have a treatment plan, and those things are important, but it’s not necessarily the kind of services that everybody needs.”

Dr. Arturo Carrillo, who leads the Collaborative for Community Wellness (CCW), said that FQHCs are limited when it comes to serving individuals with severe mental illness and long-standing trauma.

“When they say trauma, what we’re talking about is years, decades, of accumulated sense of loss, harm, and exploitation, and this is an issue that is more pronounced in low-income communities,” Carrillo said.

FQHCs are set up to offer short-term treatment relative to the city-run public mental health clinics, which do not have

limits on the number of sessions one can attend, he explained, but establishing trust and safety with patients—who are often dealing with complex trauma—takes time.

The public clinic model “is set up to be a resource for communities where people can have a continuing relationship with a therapist,” he said. “FQHCs are about churning through patients.”

After the CMHA was passed in 1963, states, taking advantage of federal incentives and funding shifts, moved away from operating psychiatric institutions in favor of community-based care settings. At the same time, Medicaid and Medicare were created; Medicaid became the single largest funder of mental health services in the United States.

As a result, today’s state mental health agencies rarely have direct responsibility for patient care, instead contracting services out to a variety of private entities, both forprofit and nonprofit. According to one 2006 analysis by health economists at Harvard and Columbia Universities, this fragmentation of public responsibility in caring for people with mental illness has reduced patients’ overall wellbeing.

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K

ennedy’s plan called for gradually replacing initial federal incentives with local (state and city) investment, but these funds were rarely, if ever, appropriated to sustain the system of

adjusted dollars since their inception.

Chicago’s network of publicly funded and operated mental health clinics has contradicted aspects of national funding trends—but this has made them vulnerable

“It is not stigma or lack of interest that stops community residents from seeking mental health services, but rather that residents are unable to obtain services due to structural and programmatic barriers” community-based mental health centers that had been established from the CMHA. This left both public and privately operated community mental health centers reliant on meager state mental health agency budgets and shrinking federal dollars.

Making matters worse, in 1981, thenPresident Ronald Reagan shifted states’ fiscal responsibility for community mental health services (both public and private) to shrinking federal block grants. What followed were cuts in state mental health agency budgets that occurred almost annually. State mental health agencies coped with cuts by reducing staff and services and closing state hospitals.

The switch to block grants didn’t just reduce the money available for mental health services—it also changed how it was distributed. To compensate for the annual funding decreases associated with block grants, states have shifted their mental health agency budgets to take advantage of Medicaid’s federal matching program, which decreases states’ financial responsibility for Medicaid-eligible individuals from a hundred percent to only seventeen-to-fifty percent of costs. While this budget shift increases the overall funding for Medicaideligible clients with mental illnesses, it reduces funds for services to non-Medicaid eligible clients—the primary population served by Chicago’s city-run public mental health clinics.

Currently, the majority of funding for the city-run public mental health clinics in Chicago comes from Community Development Block Grants, a federal-level Housing and Urban Development (HUD) initiative. The value of those grants has decreased seventy-four percent in inflation-

to neoliberal political whims. Richard M. Daley closed seven of the city’s original nineteen public clinics in the 1990s despite significant community backlash. The remaining twelve clinics were not unaffected; budget cuts forced them to cut staff and reduce services. In 2009, Daley, citing a $1.2 million reduction in state funding (which Springfield blamed on billing errors during the state’s transition to a fee-for-services system), floated the idea of closing still more clinics.

Daley never followed through, but when Emanuel took office in 2011, his first budget included closing half of the twelve clinics that remained—and the city council passed it unanimously. Chicago Reader columnist Ben Joravsky suggested that one explanation for aldermen’s acquiescence was that the budget vote coincided with the redrawing of ward maps—leading even the most progressive of aldermen to vote more out of deference to the mayor than commitment to their constituents’ interests.

The impact, however, was evident. Four of the shuttered clinics were on the South and Southwest Sides. One of those was one of only two that offered bilingual services in Spanish and English.

Emanuel’s justification for the closures?

Savings of roughly $3 million, or 0.04 percent of the city’s $8.2 billion budget.

The administration also argued that the Affordable Care Act and expansions to Medicaid would extend insurance coverage and reduce the need for public clinics.

In 2016, another city-run clinic on the Far South Side was transferred to private management, leaving Chicago with only five publicly funded and operated mental health clinics—a quarter of what the city started

with in the 1970s.

I

n the wake of pressures to shrink and privatize the mental health system, communities have responded in many ways. In the 1990s, a group of community advocates formed the Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers, which resisted clinic closures through the early 2000s. After Daley closed seven clinics, the Coalition refused to lose faith, but did switch tactics. In 2004, they turned their energy to organizing the Expanded Mental Health Services Program (EMHSP), which created an innovative model to finance and operate community-based mental health centers. Under the EMHSP, communities can place a referendum on their local ballot asking residents to vote on an increase in property taxes (approximately an extra $4 for every $1,000 paid in property taxes per year) to fund local mental health services.

Communities can initiate, approve, and fund new mental health centers themselves.

Bypassing the city to focus on statewide reform, the Coalition led efforts that resulted in passing the Community Expanded Mental Health Services Act in 2011, which allows any community in Chicago to create an EMHSP. To date, three communities have passed an EMHSP referendum, each with over seventy-four percent of the community voting in favor—a wide margin of approval indicating that Chicago communities are committed to helping finance communitybased mental health treatment.

At the same time that the Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers was working to create and pass a new funding stream for mental health services in Chicago, another group of advocates pressured the city to strengthen the city-run public mental health clinics. When threats of clinic closures began again in 2009, the Mental Health Movement (MHM), an initiative within the activist group Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP), led a campaign of demonstrations against the closures. The MHM is composed primarily of individuals with lived experience of mental illness and consumers of mental health services.

Upon hearing the news of the Emanuelmandated clinic closings, the MHM acted quickly. On the day the Woodlawn clinic was slated to close, the group staged a protest in which more than twenty people were arrested. STOP activists chained themselves to the clinic, in some places three people deep. “It was hours before police

were able to make it through a side door and arrest everyone,” said Amika Tendaji, STOP’s lead MHM organizer. “Those cases for the people who got arrested lasted way longer than they should have. It was a demonstration of Rahm’s cruelty.” Shortly after the protest, the Woodlawn clinic was permanently closed.

In 2016, without any public input or hearings, the city announced its plans to privatize the Roseland clinic, one of the six city-run public mental health clinics remaining. On a cold day in December of that year, MHM activists occupied the clinic.

Ronald “Kowboy” Jackson, a MHM leader, chained himself to the clinic doors for hours until police forcibly removed him. Soon after, the Roseland clinic was privatized, displacing mental health providers and patients alike.

Tendaji said the impacts of displacement due to privatization were profound, causing disruptions in longstanding patient-provider clinical relationships. “It wasn’t just a switch in therapist,” she said. “This was their entire clinical environment.” Part of what inspired the resistance to clinic closures was a real fear among patients that they would lose therapists they had worked with for years, she explained.

Meg Lewis, director of special projects at AFSCME, the union that represents the public mental health clinic employees, says that even as therapists dealt with layoffs due to closures, they were concerned about how their clients would be impacted. “They really did not want to see people fall through the cracks,” Lewis said. “These are safety net services, and it was very unclear at that point if the city had a plan for continuity of care for people who were receiving services at the clinics.”

F

ollowing the closures, advocates knew they had to switch tactics once again. In 2018, in an effort to create a catalyst for mental health organizing that went beyond the issue of the clinic closures, the MHM created the Healing Village. By using an imaginative place-based organizing venue at 61st Street and Greenwood Avenue in Woodlawn, MHM advocates aimed to “challenge what mental health could be, looking at community building as an aspect of healing,” Tendaji said.

The group partnered with Project Fielding, an organization that trains women and gender nonconforming individuals in carpentry. Project Fielding volunteers had built two structures intended to go

FEBRUARY 5, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

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to Dakota Access Pipeline protesters at Standing Rock., The buildings never made it, but went to Healing Village instead.

The first vacant lot organizers chose for the Village belonged to corrupt Woodlawn property owner, longtime neighborhood power player, and pastorLeon Finney Jr. He complained to then-20th Ward Alderman Willie Cochran, who had initially given organizers permission to use the lot, according to the Reader. The alderman told the activists to move, so they packed up the structures and set up at 61st and Greenwood instead.

After organizers moved, Cochran drove by to tell them in person that he still did not like the space they had built. Cochran (who was under federal indictment at the time, and is now serving a year in prison for accepting bribes and misusing campaign funds) put a cease-construction order on the lot and told organizers that a bulldozer would be coming. MHM organizers stayed overnight to ensure the space would not be bulldozed.

Healing Village came at a critical time

PHOTOS BY AISLINN PULLEY AND AMIKA TENDAJI

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 5, 2020

for the community: the day after its launch, members of the South Shore community were attacked and beaten by Chicago police officers during a protest of the CPD’s murder of a local resident named Harith “Snoop” Augustus. Although the Village had planned to hold a barbecue and game day for its first event, it instead became a place where community members could decompress from the protest. The Village was filled with tears while community members held and comforted one other. A parent whose son had also been murdered by police delivered a powerful speech. “In ways that are difficult to describe, there was something more powerfully healing about being outside, being in the sun, being together with your community in that space,” Tendaji said.

Throughout that summer, community members—including those with and without mental health issues—came to the Healing Village for art therapy workshops, to tend to the garden, and to play games.

Various organizations hosted resource fairs and facilitated intentional community

building in the space. According to Tendaji, two mothers who lived adjacent to the block and had lost children to gun violence met for the first time at the Healing Village.

Butterflies, a symbol the MHM adopted years prior, were prominent at the Healing Village, where they were attracted to the garden and a nearby field brimming with clover.

As fall arrived, and with it the first signs of another Chicago winter, organizers and community members disassembled the Healing Village. It had succeeded in educating community members about the lack of affordable services in their neighborhoods and the importance of public, rather than privatized, mental health clinics.

O

n the West Side, Saint Anthony Hospital’s Community Wellness Program (CWP), which includes mental health services, had also noticed a gap in mental health providers in the neighborhoods they served once the clinics closed. The CWP, which serves primarily Spanish-speaking individuals without insurance, saw that between 2012 and 2016, waitlists and referrals for individuals seeking services had nearly doubled. And after Donald Trump’s election in 2016, calls requesting appointments for mental health services at the CWP reached an all-time high. Recognizing that their program was unable to meet the needs of the communities they served, in 2016 the CWP convened the Collaborative for Community Wellness (CCW).

The CCW is a coalition of people with lived experience of mental health concerns, mental health service providers, and community-based organizations, including STOP, Pilsen Alliance, and Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. As a first step in their organizing campaign, CCW assessed mental health needs for individuals in ten high-poverty, primarily Latinx and AfricanAmerican neighborhoods on the Southwest side of Chicago.

The CCW’s research found that, contrary to a popular public narrative, it is not stigma or lack of interest that stops community residents from seeking mental health services, but structural obstacles that stand in the way of easy access. More than eighty percent of the approximately 2,850 individuals surveyed said they would seek professional help for personal problems, but reported barriers to service that included high costs, long waitlists, and lack of

transportation or childcare.

With clear data showing there is a high need and desire for mental health services, especially in low-income Black and Latinx neighborhoods, the CCW began its advocacy campaign to pressure the city to reopen the closed clinics. In the fall of 2018, the MHM joined the CCW to protest and rally at the site of a closed public mental health clinic in Back of the Yards.

In November, responding to pressure from CCW members who were constituents, 22nd Ward Alderman Ricardo Muñoz introduced a $25 million amendment for public mental health services. But the amendment was not included in the final budget, a signal to organizers that they needed to switch tactics and collect more city-wide data.

In 2018, Dr. Judy King, a key mental health advocate in Chicago and member of the Chicago Mental Health Board, used a FOIA request to obtain the CDPH’s list of 253 mental health service providers. Using King’s list, CCW members conducted a systematic assessment of the accessibility of the city’s mental health providers. They identified many barriers to access, most fundamentally an inability to contact providers: CCW researchers placed at least two phone calls to each organization, and approximately forty percent of listed providers (103 agencies) could not be reached, were duplicate listings, or had ceased to function. Other issues—long waitlists for services, a dearth of facilities offering services in Spanish, and limited free services for low-income individuals— overlapped with the findings of the earlier, ten-neighborhood survey. Furthermore, the data revealed spatial inequities in the distribution of mental health providers, with a markedly lower number of accessible providers on the city’s South and West Sides.

I

n January 2019, a ray of hope emerged for advocates who wished to move beyond simply protesting against closures to strengthening and growing the city’s public mental health system. The CCW and MHM partnered with AFSCME to lobby Alderman Sophia King, who helped advocates create and pass a resolution that established the Public Mental Health Clinic Service Expansion Task Force. The task force was directed to explore the possibility of reopening public mental health clinics.

At the Health and Human Services Committee’s hearing on the resolution, CCW advocates handed out their report

PHOTOS BY AISLINN PULLEY AND AMIKA TENDAJI

assessing CDPH’s list of mental health providers for real-world accessibility.

Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa cited the CCW’s research in his testimony supporting the passage of the resolution. Dr. Carrillo said the research “pushed a different discourse in the conversation that wouldn’t have been there if it were not for the work of the collaborative.” Additionally, CCW and MHM members provided key testimony during the committee hearing, and a strong community presence maintained public pressure to advocate for its passage.

The measure passed unanimously through City Council, despite opposition from Dr. Julie Morita, then the city’s public health commissioner.

The resolution also mandated the task force hold a public hearing to assess the impact of the public mental health clinic closures and gather suggestions from community members on how to improve Chicago’s mental health system. The hearing was held in June 2019 at Malcolm X College with more than two hundred residents from across the city attending. For more than two hours, community residents shared oral and

written testimony about how the closures severely limited their options for accessing mental health services and recovering from their mental illness. Researchers partnered with the CCW compiled the testimony into a report that was made public and shared with elected officials.

The public hearing and release of the report further increased pressure for aldermen to support public mental health services. In October 2019, aldermen in the Health and Human Services Committee, led by members of the Progressive Reform Caucus, took the highly unusual step of stalling the confirmation of Lightfoot’s nominee for Public Health Commissioner, Dr. Allison Arwady, because she had previously defended the public clinic closures in formal testimony. Arwady was later confirmed in January 2020, but only after Lightfoot, facing mounting public pressure to fulfill a campaign promise she made to reopen the clinics, made concessions that included an additional $9.3 million in mental health funding. Budget negotiations culminated in an increase of funding to upgrade the existing public

mental health clinics, increase support staff, and fill clinical vacancies while prioritizing the hiring of bilingual staff. But Lightfoot’s first budget—which City Council passed— failed to reopen a single clinic.

Still, significant legislative progress has been made, not only to protect the remaining city-run public mental health clinics, but also to increase city funding and commitment for mental health services in Chicago. This likely would not have occurred without the public pressure mobilized by grassroots activists and bolstered with community-led research.

“Mental health is an approach to increase unity within our fractured communities, which have experienced violence,” Dr. Carrillo said. “If every community in the city had a community wellness program, a resource center in which people could walk in and get mental health support and a variety of family support, in a way that’s free and accessible, we would have a different city.” Though mental health clinics remained shuttered across the city, advocates will continue to push for a mental health system where high-quality and effective treatments

are available to all Chicagoans, not just to those in high-income neighborhoods with private insurance.

Public mental health clinics are “the cornerstone of the mental health system, of the city’s safety net,” said Lewis. “In the same way that we need public schools and public libraries, we need a public health system. There’s other organizations that are doing great work, but ultimately we want to make sure that folks have free care, walk-in care, care in the neighborhoods where they need it.”

Dani Adams is a PhD student at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. She lives in Pilsen and is a member of the Collaborative for Community Wellness, one of the coalitions discussed in this piece. She helped with the Collaborative’s most recent reports cited in this article, including the report assessing CDPH’s mental health provider list for real-world accessibility, and the report from public hearing testimony. This is her first contribution to the Weekly. ¬

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What Happened to the Mental Health Task Force?

Public Health Commissioner Allison Arwady has proposed a new task force to “coordinate” mental health efforts

BY JIM DALEY

I

n January 2019, the City Council responded to pressure by community activists—who had been organizing for better public mental health services ever since then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed six of the city’s public mental health clinics—by establishing a task force to study where in the city clinics should be reopened.

A year later, that task force appears to be defunct, and Dr. Allison Arwady, the newly-appointed commissioner of public health, told the Weekly that the Chicago Department of Public Health is forming a new one. As of this writing, none of the shuttered mental health clinics are slated to be reopened. Advocates have criticized the original task force’s accomplishments, and question the motives behind establishing a new one.

4th Ward Alderman Sophia King drafted the resolution that established the 2019 task force, and forty-six of the Council’s fifty aldermen co-sponsored it. The legislation mandated that the task force include two representatives of CDPH, two from AFSCME (the union that represents public mental health clinic workers), and two from the Chicago Community Mental Health Board (an advisory body to the CDPH), as well as two aldermen from among those who represent wards where clinics were closed.

The task force was charged with studying “which community areas shall be prioritized for reopening mental health clinics” and making recommendations for “expanding and improving services at existing facilities.”

The legislation also directed the task force to hold a public hearing, which it did at Malcolm X College on the Near West Side last June. (King, who represents parts of Hyde Park, Kenwood, Bronzeville, and the South Loop, declined the Weekly’s request 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 5, 2020

for comment.)

Arwady said in an interview that the new task force will be run out of the mayor’s office, and will focus on coordinating the city’s assorted efforts around mental health.

“There will be an overarching focus on mental health equity,” with subcommittees to address clinical spaces, diversion, and crisis intervention, she said. “There will be aldermen involved in it, there will be community folks involved in it, there will be providers, there will be people with lived experience.” She added that the new task force will replace the 2019 one, adding that the previous task force “is not active at the moment.”

“As a body, the [2019] task force didn’t accomplish anything,” said Dr. Judy King, one of the CCMHB representatives on the task force, in an email to the Weekly. “The individuals initially invited to the task force,” per the resolution, “met as a group once on May 16, 2019. The public was excluded. Two of us objected. It was the only meeting.” Dr. King added that the June public meeting “was not an official hearing of the task force.

We never voted on it.”

More than two hundred community members attended the public hearing, where twenty-five individuals testified to their experiences with mental health services. Attendees also provided written testimony and filled out a survey about their experiences. Dr. Leticia Villareal Sosa, a professor of social work at Dominican University in suburban River Forest, moderated the hearing and drafted a report based on its findings.

The report identified barriers to accessing mental health services that included cost, lack of insurance, long distances to public clinics, and poor treatment from providers. The report also

detailed the “systemic harm” that historical and ongoing trauma has on underserved communities. Recommendations included increasing funding and moving beyond solely using block grant funding for public clinics; expanding services to underserved communities on the South, West, and Southwest Sides of the city; and increasing access to trauma-informed mental health services (trauma-informed care describes an approach to care that is sensitive to the impact trauma has had on patients’ wellbeing).

Villareal Sosa said that copies of the report went to the task force and to the Collaborative for Community Wellness, a collective of mental health providers, community organizations, and residents.

“The aldermen certainly have used the report,” in particular to leverage opposition to Arwady’s appointment in October 2019, she said. “Unfortunately, as far as I know at this point, the [CDPH] has not used…the report to inform any of their decisions.”

When asked how the recommendations from the 2019 task force report would be implemented by CDPH, Arwady said she “did not have specific pieces in front of me, but we are certainly taking input from a lot of directions; we have been and continue to do so.” She added that the task force was not organized by CDPH, and said questions about it would be best directed to the City Council.

Arwady also said that CDPH conducted “a lot of structured interviews and conversations with folks across Chicago who work in different settings.” She said the department interviewed community organizations and patients who are served by public clinics to identify strengths and gaps in the mental health system. “All of that data was used to help develop” the mayor’s

plan to address deficiencies in public mental health, which included a pledge to double spending on mental health (an increase of about $9 million), provide trauma-informed services, and improve outreach.

The CDPH and City Clerk’s office responded to public records requests the Weekly submitted for materials related to the public hearing by saying neither office had any notes, transcripts, or other documents from the meeting. Dr. King submitted a FOIA request to CDPH regarding fifty structured interviews the department conducted with stakeholders between June and October 2019 to develop its mental health framework, and said she was similarly rebuffed, receiving simply a list of stakeholders but none of their answers.

“I think a lot more could be done in terms of really acknowledging some of the findings of the report,” Villareal Sosa said.

“I would like to see more inclusion of this [community] perspective by the CDPH in terms of their decision-making around services. I think it could be used in a wider, more intentional way.”

Patrick Brosnan, the executive director of the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, one of several community groups that has advocated for expanding public mental health access, said he thinks the 2019 task force was not “really invested in” by the CDPH or taken as seriously as it should have been. “That’s too bad, because I think that there’s a lot of good people, including people who used the public clinics, whose opinion should be taken into consideration when we’re making decisions about funding and quality.”

“I hope that the new task force is not just going to be filled with people who are just going to be providing some sort of intellectual or community currency to the existing plans without actually critically examining the system that we have in place and looking at the gaps,” Brosnan said. “And I hope there’s people on the task force who believe in the public system, and not just people who believe that privatization is the way to go.”

Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor. ¬

HEALTH

The Future of Public Mental Health?

City Public Health Commissioner Allison Arwady says she is “confident” the city is heading in the right direction to deliver mental health services

BY JIM DALEY

I

n January, the City Council confirmed Dr. Allison Arwady as Chicago’s new commissioner of public health. Arwady had been the acting commissioner after Dr. Julie Morita resigned from the position in June 2019. Prior to becoming commissioner, Arwady was the Chicago Department of Public Health’s (CDPH) chief medical officer for four years; before that, she worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer.

Last October, after Mayor Lori Lightfoot formally nominated Arwady

for the position, aldermen in a Human Relations and Health Committee session blocked her confirmation. Members of the City Council’s Progressive Reform Caucus raised concerns over the closures of six public mental health clinics that occurred under the Emanuel administration, noting that Lightfoot had made campaign promises to reopen the clinics, but later backed away from the pledge. Arwady had in the past made statements supporting the closures, and when the objecting aldermen pressed her on the issue, she reiterated her opposition to reopening the clinics, citing

the fact that the remaining five public clinics are not operating at full capacity.

The Weekly discussed city mental health services with Arwady after the full City Council confirmed her appointment.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How will the Chicago Department of Public Health ensure that patients with mental illness know where public clinics are?

Number one is that we have some real

money for promotion—everything from anti-stigma campaigns [to] making sure that we’re getting information out broadly about mental health and also about our own clinics. We’ve dedicated hundreds of thousands of dollars to print material and other media ways of raising awareness, but we’re pairing that with new staff whose job will be just to do outreach around and for our CDPH clinics. We have three new positions we’ll be hiring this year. Our goal is to make sure that the CDPH clinics are part of this larger system in Chicago, so we want to think about building new linkages and

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approach as something that is not just for the department. I’m interested in expanding this more broadly and having it be something that we’re talking about far beyond CDPH, across the city and outside of city government to all the settings in which people are trying to help other people.

How will CDPH ensure continuity of care for patients who access public mental health clinics?

SHANE TOLENTINO

partnerships between our clinics and other community assets, [and] doing training— for example [in] Mental Health First Aid in the community served by the clinic.

Critics say the clinics are uninviting to patients, and that this issue may contribute to underutilization. Does CDPH have plans to make public clinics more welcoming to patients?

Funding has always been an issue related to mental health broadly. Even where we look historically, some of that reason was because of the major state funding cuts that happened around mental health. So, the fact that the mayor in 2020 more than doubled the mental health funding, really gave us flexibility in terms of what kinds of investments we need to make. One of the really concrete things is physical improvements to our site. We know that we have really dedicated providers and professionals, but [there are] basic things like if our signage is not up to date, if our clinics are not welcoming in terms of creating a good therapeutic environment, [these are] all things [we] can do to make sure people feel comfortable in a setting where they’re going to support their mental health.

Is the inclusion of trauma-informed care new to the CDPH under your leadership?

The violence prevention teams here at CDPH for a number of years have been interested in how to do this better. But I think frankly with the new mayor coming in, there was a lot of interest in how can we turn this concept into reality. For example, here at CDPH we did a trauma-informed physical assessment of all of our clinics. We looked at language and have done trainings internally.

At the mayor’s request, starting last summer, we started with partners developing these kinds of trauma-informed trainings that aren’t just for our health department staff, but were available for city employees who were working with youth in the summer.

And it’s something we really want to build on this year, so we’re interested in things like not just clinical settings but other settings in which people may have mental health issues—or if not formal mental health issues, difficult experiences in their life [that may need support].

This goes far beyond the clinic. A concrete example where we think about young people [are the] Chicago Public Schools, which are very interested in this and doing work around [trauma]. But we’re also planning to do outreach to coaches and athletic and recreational settings where kids may know those folks and sometimes issues may come up.

I really see this trauma-informed

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 5, 2020

One of the problems that we see is that right now there are people getting mental health care primarily through emergency departments. Especially people with more severe forms of mental illness, [they’re] frankly rotating through the emergency department [because] they’re in and out of crisis. That is the opposite of a good continuity of care plan. We’ve been working with partners across the city to make sure we really are building a network of mental health care. Not only are we investing in outpatient clinics, but we’re creating for the first time some violence prevention programming that will really make sure people who are victims of violence—and their families and community members— if there are mental health needs there, we will use the opportunity for outreach.

We’re investing for the first time in crisis prevention and response teams to address the issue that people may not have a real care plan. It will be an opportunity to bring mental health treatment out of the clinic and to people with some of the highest needs.

Do you have any plans to work with the various community groups that sprang up to fill the mental health care void that occurred after the 2011 closures?

Absolutely. One of the things that’s most important to understand is that the cityfunded clinics play an important role, but [that is] a really small role in terms of numbers. We want to grow that, but even at the peak we were maybe serving five percent of the adults [who were] getting mental health care. So, it’s really worth thinking about really building a network and that’s our goal: coordinating mental health across the system absolutely means working with these community partners. My team has been doing a lot of work over the past year or so, reaching out to community mental health clinics, some of whom are working in the spaces where there were previously CDPH clinics, [and] many of whom are working

across the city, and to the other publicly funded mental health sites. Whether that’s our Federally Qualified Health Centers, whether that may be a school-based clinic, there’s a lot of different settings. We really want to make sure that we’re doing a much better job of coordinating all those resources.

Mayor Lightfoot’s 2020 budget allocated an additional $9.3 million to fund new mental health initiatives. How will you ensure accountability in terms of how that money is spent?

The Health Department has a lot of responsibility for accountability when we work with community partners. For example, we receive a lot of federal grant dollars around things like immunization or tuberculosis, and we often are contracting with community partners to ensure that the goals the city made [are met]. And so, we have good systems and processes in place around things like reporting, what kind of data will folks be providing back, things like fiscal oversight, the basics of ensuring that you're being a good steward of this funding.

We will use a lot of those similar mechanisms with this funding. I'm confident that it will be used well.

My hope is that people will be excited about these new investments and really looking forward to seeing improvements.

At the end of the day, we’re all interested in improving and getting more people the care they need.

Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor. He last wrote about holiday baked goods from around the South Side for the 2019 Holiday Issue. ¬

POLITICS FASHION

PAULA FRIEDRICH AND BILL HEALY

Modeling for Success

BRIDGET VAUGHN

A fashion runway program empowers students to pursue their dreams

BY BRIDGET VAUGHN

I

n the summer of 2018, my friend Lovetta Spencer invited me to attend a fashion show at Dearborn Denim and Apparel in Hyde Park. Her son Zion, a recent graduate of South Shore International High School, had been selected to receive a scholarship at the fashion show. And there, I met Stanley Coleman Jr. A native Hyde Parker, Coleman graduated from Kenwood High School and has a business degree in management and broadcast journalism from Columbia College. After graduation, he worked for the Chicago Sky, and then in South Shore politics. A former teacher and program

coordinator at South Shore International High School, he founded SCJR Productions two years ago as a way to help high school students learn something new, engage with others out of school, and receive financial assistance toward college “As future leaders of tomorrow, we encourage our students to become proactive in seeking solutions in the face of adversity,” Coleman writes on the SCJR website.

“With out-of-town tuition costs and college loan interest rates skyrocketing, even the smallest contribution toward a student's college expenses helps with necessities such as boarding, books, and school supplies.”

SCJR’s popular Fashion/Modeling 101 program was created in response to an afterschool activity survey, which showed that students wanted activities that fostered courage, confidence, and self-esteem and helped them reach their dreams in college and beyond. Coleman secures scholarship support for his troupe by tapping into his network for donations and seeking out organizations that support his mission. The financial assistance helps motivate students to do well in school as well as on the runway.

At the October 2019 fashion show, two students received $1,250 in scholarships.

In an earlier show, one student received

combined scholarships totaling more than $5,000.

In the past two years, Coleman has given out close to forty scholarships and over one hundred students have participated in the runway program. He treats the models with respect and takes pride in their choices.

The students learn life skills, including poise, confidence, the business side of fashion, being responsible on social media, booking shows, and how to safely navigate the fashion world. Students will have these skills for the rest of their lives, whether or not they end up pursuing careers in fashion.

Coleman lives a few blocks from the

FEBRUARY 5, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

FASHION

Silver Room, on 53rd Street in Hyde Park. When, in 2017, Dearborn Denim opened next door to the neighborhood anchor, Coleman reached out to see if general manager Kaleb Sullivan would be interested in hosting a regular fashion show.

Sullivan, said Coleman, was keen to give back to the community and its youth.

The December fashion show was SCJR Productions’ eighth event at Dearborn Denim and Apparel. The store, with hardwood floors and neon signs, sells men’s and women’s jeans, shirts, hats, belts, and other casual attire in a long and relatively narrow space. The setting was perfect for a fashion show where students modelled denim and streetwear. Chairs for sixty guests were placed in rows along the walls.

While the models changed clothes between acts, Coleman engaged the audience with raffle prizes, announcements, the presentation of student scholarships, and performances.

At the October show, CBS 2 reporter Suzanne LeMignot acknowledged the

attendees, the models, and announced raffle ticket winners. During intermission, local rapper and spoken word artist and Dearborn Denim staffer June performed several of her original songs.

Since the program began, the modeling troupe has performed at the Black Women’s Expo and been featured on local media.

“I like this program because of the experience and the people that I meet throughout the program,” said one student, a junior. “This program is helping me be more professional. After this, I want to go to college to do graphic design, engineering and photography.”

While Coleman teaches the modeling classes, he also relies on some of his more experienced students, typically juniors and seniors. They have their boots on the ground and circle back to Coleman with suggestions and concerns related to the upcoming shows. He encourages them to be comfortable coming to him with ideas or simply to talk about life.

The students intentionally model

BRIDGET VAUGHN

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 5, 2020

fashionably cool, casual streetwear and clothing that is unapologetically Black.

Coleman wants his models to represent Black heritage and community with intention.

“It’s really nice to model with my classmates. Just to see them make themselves so beautiful and confident,” said one student, a senior who is planning on attending the University of Illinois and majoring in business. “The reason why I model now is to build a platform for myself so Black women can know they are beautiful, to demonstrate that they can be beautiful on the magazine covers just like the European women are cast.”

The troupe also uses the runway to promote various causes and platforms, including #TimesUp, #MeToo, breast cancer awareness, lupus awareness, and pediatric cancer awareness. “We are not just a typical runway program,” said Coleman.

“We want to be that kind of program that services the needs that are the immediate of our community.”

SCJR Productions is a family effort.

Coleman’s mother, brother, and stepfather attend and help out at the fashion shows and support the work he’s doing. “My mom, my stepdad, and my younger brother, they’ve been amazing. I couldn’t do what I am doing without those three,” said Coleman.

When the modeling program began in 2017, most of the models came from South Shore International High School. Now, models from other high schools participate as well, including students from Kenwood Academy, Jones College Prep, Glenbard South, Martin Luther King High School, and charter schools. As word continues to get around about the program, Coleman feels confident that he’s on track to dominate this market and to continue adding new scholarships for the student models to help alleviate the cost of college.

Bridget Vaughn is a contributor to the Weekly.

She last photographed and wrote for the Weekly about eight houses of worshop during the 2018 Open House Chicago. ¬

BRIDGET VAUGHN

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FEBRUARY 5, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

EDUCATION

Wanted: Ways to boost the profile of Local School Councils A new state bill could be a start MARIE FAZIO, CHALKBEAT CHICAGO MARIE FAZIO

E

stablished as a way to ensure parent and staff input into the running of schools, Chicago’s Local School Councils were heralded as a potent mechanism to empower communities.

Twenty years later, many councils suffer from vacancies, parent indifference, and a sense of powerlessness. But with council elections looming in April, the school district is hoping to beef up participation, parents are speaking out, and a key state bill could boost the councils’ profile. Chicago community groups are seeking to engage parents and community members and press lawmakers to give the bodies more teeth.

In a city lacking an elected school board, “It is the only democracy we have within the education system in Chicago,” said Rod Wilson, an organizer from the Lugenia Burns Hope Center, at a workshop aimed at strengthening the councils.

“If you’re getting public dollars then we’re saying that parents should have some say in the governance of the school.” But some parents feel as if they’re fighting an uphill battle to create change.

“Most members don’t welcome me there,” said Myriam Perez, who has served three terms as a community representative on the council of her former school, Nathan S. Davis Elementary in Brighton Park. She joined the council because she wanted to give back to the school that made her feel safe when she didn’t in her own home. But she’s had a mixed experience.

“I tend to ask a lot of questions, I

tend to call people out if they’re not doing something … I don’t like going sometimes but I go anyways because I know that I want to speak up for students that might want a safe space at Davis.”

At the Saturday workshop, the host group Raise Your Hand encouraged attendees to get involved with their councils and briefed on coming changes, including the proposed LSC Empowerment Bill that would bolster councils’ powers.

More than 150 council members, parents, teachers and community members, plus several school board members, attended the Saturday workshop at offices of the teachers union.

Chicago is the only city in the state that uses the local school council model in public schools. Each school council has space for six parents, two teachers, one non-teacher staff member and two community members, as well as a student representative in high schools.

The councils have the authority to hire and evaluate the principal, allocate discretionary funds, and approve and monitor the school improvement plan.

Charter schools, contract schools and military schools—which together make up about one-fifth of public schools in the city—do not have councils.

But those schools would be required to form local councils under a state bill proposed by state Representative Sonya Harper, of the 6th district, and state Senator Ram Villivalam, of the 8th district. The bill

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 5, 2020

also would allow councils to keep decisionmaking authority when schools are on probation.

It also would prohibit the district from closing any school without a supermajority of the council approving.

Additionally, the bill would scale back district influence on the councils and create advisory positions for seventh and eighth graders. In response to criticism about the preparation and ongoing support for council members, the bill calls for an independent commission in charge of training.

Some parents cite a lack of consistency among schools in running councils. Many attendees raised questions about voting technicalities and election rules, as well as the specifics of LSC authority.

The John H. Hamline Elementary council has a community vacancy and a nonteacher staff vacancy, said Geszill Lightfoot, a teacher at the school who has served on the council.

“Community should be involved because they have a stake in the education of the kids as well. It’s their school, their neighborhood,” said Jessica Suarez Nieto, who also teaches at Hamline Elementary, located in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. “How do we welcome parents to come in?”

David Vance, who is the community representative at James H. Bowen High School and James N. Thorp Elementary School, in South Chicago, said he’s noticed a lack of parent and community involvement in both councils.

“We need more parent involvement,” Vance said. “This is our taxpayer money. Our schools are public institutions, so we need to have our voices loud and clear to fight for the money that we need to fight for better schools because CPS hasn’t been doing it.”

Others said they hoped to bring a fresh perspective to their current councils. Bridget Doherty Trebing, a visual art teacher at Taft High School, in Norwood Park, said that her school’s council does not reflect the diverse student body and has consistent low attendance at meetings.

“We benefit from some privilege, being a well-resourced school, but our LSC is not terribly progressive … so I don’t feel like our LSC best serves our students,” Doherty Trebing said. “I don’t think we’re doing a good job of engaging the community.”

The coalition LSCs.4.All will launch a hotline February 15 to assist with elections and answer general inquiries, said Jennie Biggs, communications and outreach director of Raise Your Hand. The number will be 707-LSC-4ALL. Elections will be held April 22 at elementary schools and April 23 at high schools.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat Chicago, a nonprofit news organization covering public education. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters. Reprinted with permission. ¬

LITERATURE

Going Deep

A painful autobiography chronicles more than five decades of privilege, struggle, and prison—and ongoing redemption

BY SCOTT PEMBERTON

W

ho Is Angalia Bianca?

Heroin addict, sex worker, and convicted felon. Educator, mentor, and lifesaving hero, with a Resolution for Bravery Award from thenMayor Rahm Emanuel to prove it. Mother, wife, and grandmother. Speaker, author, and “violence interrupter” for Chicago-based Cure Violence Global, which was previously known as CeaseFire.

Angalia Bianca is, or was, each of those things. Today she is much more—though still not enough, in her eyes.

“I’m not a big deal,” she once told WGN TV. “I’m just a person trying to save the world.”

The memoir she co-authored with Linda Beckstrom, In Deep: How I Survived Gangs, Heroin, and Prison to Become a Chicago Violence Interrupter, was published in October 2018. The street violence she chronicled, however, remains, though the city’s efforts to stop it have new and controversial twists: the Chicago Police Department’s Gun Offender Dashboard, more emphasis on street-level interaction between police and residents, and citywide anti-violence programs.

In Deep is personal. It’s concerned with the minutiae of violence, not the panorama.

The book tells this harshest of stories in a disarmingly matter-of-fact way, often revealing more than we might need or want to know. Yet the sheer volume of detail is part of the book’s appeal. It takes the reader into the streets, where Bianca spent most of her life, and into the rock-and-a-hard-place positions of those who choose to follow Bianca’s path or find themselves too far along to stop.

As a private catharsis for Bianca, the amount of detail seems to be exactly right: “I’m brutally honest… I can’t help someone if I don’t tell the truth.” But the book is also a terrible, cautionary tale for the rest of us and

anyone we care about.

The photo of Bianca’s face on the cover hints at a hard-lived life. In her writing, her personality comes across as endearing, soft-spoken, even charming—someone you can’t help but like. Reinforcing that feeling is her “guess-what-happened-tome today, honey” style of storytelling: at heart, she’s just a nice person who wants to do the right thing. Yet she readily admits that she used that disarming personality to exploit just about everyone she’s known since she began “getting high [on alcohol] at nine years old.” Along the way—all along the way, for thirty-five years, she says—her highs came mainly from heroin, the usual pharmaceutical suspects, and of course, alcohol.

In Deep describes Bianca’s privileged childhood in west suburban Oak Park and, beginning in her teens, a downward spiral through drugs, homelessness and crime before—after some forty years—an inspiring turnaround. The spiral follows many twists and turns, including crosscountry journeys with rock stars (Keith Moon of The Who, for instance), con artists, and a motorcycle gang as her companions. Lots of movement, little direction.

Bianca shows her unending penchant for getting into and out of high-risk trouble. Prostitution, for example, is a continual source of cash and even comfort.

Her near-death heroin overdose at an Arizona mansion doesn’t surprise the reader. A step-by-step explanation of an ingenious, lucrative, airline-ticket scam she runs is almost nostalgic. The ploy makes use of sleight-of-hand paper trails and time-lag hacks impossible to imagine today.

Bianca eventually returns to Chicago for good, but without direction, again falls

in with the wrong crowd. Soon enough, she proves herself by surviving a violent femaleadministered beat-down (yes, like those you see on TV and in the movies) and, according to the book, becomes a well-compensated, drug-dealing gang member in Humboldt Park.

Then, despite having eluded imprisonment for most of her career, the bottom falls out. She spends twelve years of revolving incarceration at the Cook County Jail and the Dwight Women’s Correctional Center in Central Illinois. In nearly every circumstance, Bianca instinctively befriends the right people and avoids breaking the wrong rules to come out on top (as much as that’s possible behind bars).

When her father died about nine years ago, however, Bianca abruptly changed direction and found some purpose and stability. Her father had been a functioning coke addict, though well-heeled and wellconnected. Ironically, he tries throughout the book to keep his daughter in line.

Bianca checked into ten months of rehabilitation at A Safe Haven, a homeless shelter and addiction treatment center near Douglas Park. She had tried and failed at rehab before, but this time was different. The experience was apparently as transformative as her four decades on the street. She claims no come-to-Jesus moment, but does acknowledge a spiritual component—“a moment of such clarity as if a door had been opened…and I could not turn away.”

She made a “deal” with God: if “you’ll take the taste of heroin and the streets from my mouth I will help people until my last dying breath.” That was in 2011.

After that, Bianca returned to the streets in a much different role by becoming a trained “violence interrupter.” On its website, Cure Violence explains that violence interrupters are trained to “prevent shootings by identifying and mediating potentially lethal conflicts in the community and following up to ensure that the conflict does not reignite.”

They also can do a lot more. The incident for which Bianca received a Resolution for Bravery from the city is an example.

Four years ago, a car stopped in front of Bianca at Harrison and California on the Near West Side and began backing up. She threw her car into reverse to avoid being rammed, heard gunshots, and then, she writes, “Three gunmen are leaning out the car windows and shooting directly in the crowd of kids on the corner… I see the shooting go down right in front of me and

watch as a teenage boy hits the ground.

I know he’s been hit, and I have to help him.” After the shooting, she went to the boy, located the bullet hole, and stopped the blood flow until emergency medical help arrived—saving his life.

Early last March, at age sixty, her journey took her to another community of privilege at the Evanston Public Library.

Bianca and co-author Beckstrom read from the book and took questions from about thirty people. Interest was evenly split between Bianca’s personal experiences and insights and how the book was developed and written. (Bianca told her story to Beckstrom, who recorded and transcribed it. They shaped and edited the final version together.) Her responses were practiced and reflected material in the book closely.

Nonetheless, there was no question about her sincerity.

The book’s tight focus is on Bianca’s story up to her rebirth, which finally provided the direction she never had. But the story stops short of answering questions we do want answered: What’s happening in her life today? What does she hope will be happening tomorrow? And what can be done about the violence in her city?

Angalia Bianca with Linda Beckstrom, In Deep: How I Survived Gangs, Heroin, and Prison to Become a Chicago Violence Interrupter. $27.99. Chicago Review Press.

272 pages Scott Pemberton is a Chicago-based writer and editor. This is his first contribution to the Weekly. ¬

FEBRUARY 5, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

POLITICS

Census Spotlight Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community

BY TAMMY XU

In preparation for the 2020 Census, the Weekly is featuring an organization doing work around the census and ways to get involved in each issue. This is the first in the series.

T

he 2020 Census kicks off for most Chicagoans on April 1, but state, county, and city groups have been raising awareness about the importance of participation for some time, anxious to avoid an undercount that could result in a projected loss of $1.2 billion in federal funding over the next decade. Areas with large populations of foreign-born residents, multi-family households, and “linguistically isolated” households are among those particularly at risk of being undercounted.

“Traditionally Asian Americans have been undercounted because of these reasons,” said Grace Chan McKibben, executive director of the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community (CBCAC), an advocacy organization based in Chinatown.

Within the greater Chinatown area— which includes not just Chinatown, but Bridgeport, McKinley Park, and sections of nearby Bronzeville and Pilsen—CBCAC has focused its canvassing efforts on fourteen census tracts that are at risk of being undercounted, with plans to knock on every single door within those tracts between now and April 30, in the hope of reaching an estimated 56,000 people.

So far, a team of ten core volunteers

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have chipped in, working in pairs to go door-to-door and take residents through the basics: the importance of the census, that it’s for everyone regardless of citizenship or legal status, that all information collected is kept confidential, and help is available to fill out forms. Volunteers are given training beforehand, so prior experience is not necessary, although fluency in one of the Cantonese, Mandarin, Fu Zhou, or Taishanese dialects spoken around Chinatown is highly sought after. CBCAC offers other ways to volunteer with census outreach as well, such as phone banking, making flyers, data entry, and writing translations. “Door knocking is not everyone’s cup of tea,” said Chan McKibben,

referring to the time commitment (it can take two canvassers two hours to cover a city block). “If people are interested, they can help at every level.”

To volunteer, email info@cbcacchicago.org.

The Weekly’s coverage of the 2020 Census is supported by a reporting grant from the McCormick Foundation, administered by the Chicago Independent Media Alliance.

Tammy Xu is a contributing editor to the Weekly. She last coordinated coverage of Chinatown and Roseland & Pullman for the 2019 Best of the South Side issue. ¬

NATURE

Experts at Play

Nature playspaces allow kids to build, and rebuild, their worlds every day

BY EMELINE POSNER

T

he kids in Ms. Pender-Bey’s eighth grade class at Mount Vernon Elementary will soon be preparing to depart for high school. But before they go, they’re leaving their mark on the neighborhood.

The class is designing their own nature playspace to be built in Jackie Robinson Park, directly adjacent to the Washington Heights school.

On a snowy January morning, Pender-Bey’s students eagerly gathered in the science lab, where Chicago Park District employees Sean Shaffer and Isaiah Ballinger had laid out paper, crayons, and special toolboxes loaded up with necessary supplies: sticks, rocks, putty, string, and, to the excitement of one of the tables at the front of the classroom, what looked like a kind of hickory nut.

The kids hardly needed instructions; after a brief introduction, they jumped to it.

Zachary and Nazir built a swing from sticks and rope and a seating circle made from branch rounds, while a couple tables down Ronaisha and Mikah worked on designing hopscotch and life-size tic-tac-toe courts and a maze made from sticks. Around the room all sorts of model structures started to rise: tree houses, sand boxes, slides, peace circles, bridges, and islands.

Helping kids design their own playspaces is a big part of the job for Shaffer.

A longtime educator and park district employee, a year and a half ago he became the district’s nature education specialist—a position created for him—after realizing how important it was for kids to have access to natural spaces where they can engage in unstructured play.

Nature playspaces and play gardens have been popping up across the city over the last several years, thanks to the park district

and to organizations like NeighborSpace and Openlands. Pocket parks that are often filled with hills of mulch, tree stumps, and hollowed out log tunnels—and lots of sticks—these playspaces aren’t quite blank canvases, but unlike traditional playgrounds full of fixed structures they are designed to be built and rebuilt again, and again, and again.

“If you give them planks and stumps, kids can create a seesaw and then the next day, [say] ‘We want it to be a ramp, a castle,’ or whatever they see,” Shaffer said.

Sticks and logs break down over time.

That’s part of the fun, Shaffer said: “It’s all loose parts, logs and sticks, that are meant to break down and become more interesting until they’re nothing.”

Once the sticks and logs are nothing— once they’ve disintegrated or otherwise become too small to be played with—the park district needs to restock the playspace.

Park district staff have addressed this potential supply problem by learning themselves to look at natural debris as play material: a fallen tree as a potential clambering structure, a large branch as a beam in a fort. Shaffer says he gets texts throughout the course of the week from crew members asking if a tree or other object could work in a playspace.

So far, Shaffer has helped oversee the design and construction of eight park district playspaces including in Hyde Park, Northerly Island, and the North Park Village Nature Center where he is based. By his count there are another eleven in some stage of the planning process, which will include Marquette Park, Douglas Park, and Rogers Park.

Shaffer and the park district are in good company with NeighborSpace and Openlands, both nonprofit organizations that have helped communities develop

BRIDGET VAUGHN

NAZIR AND ZACHARY BUILD A BENCH WITH WOOD AND PUTTY AS PART OF THEIR PLAYSPACE MODEL.

“If you give them planks and stumps, kids can create a seesaw and then the next day, [say] ‘We want it to be a ramp, a castle,’ or whatever they see.” similar spaces throughout the city.

Openlands helps lead an initiative called “Space to Grow,” which transforms Chicago Public Schools land into green playspaces and gardens, which also helps to reduce flooding by relieving pressure on the stormwater system.

NeighborSpace, which until recently focused on buying land for and maintaining community gardens, first started working with nature play spaces in 2013 after being approached by community organizations and residents in Little Village who wanted a community playspace, Robin Cline, NeighborSpace’s assistant director, said. The garden was completed in 2015, after two years of in-depth community planning, and more followed, in McKinley Park, North Lawndale, and Humboldt Park. And more are planned, on the Far Southeast Side, Austin, and Garfield Park—the latter two as part of the West Side Nature Play Network.

“More and more communities are coming to us with requests and desires to figure out how to meet the needs of their

communities that are not necessarily met by [playgrounds or] traditional community gardens,” Cline said. “One of the [important aspects] of community managed nature play is the need for intergenerational space that allow for community building… and for kids to play in nature and in their own neighborhoods.”

Though one of the biggest proponents of the nature play movement is based in North Carolina, Cline said, the movement is really international, with roots in Scandinavia.

“More and more we’re recognizing the importance… [of ] providing opportunities for early childhood play and decisionmaking.” And not just for kids, but for parents too. “The community stewardship that happens in these play gardens,” she said, referring to plantings and other community work days that occur in play gardens, ”reflects adult play.”

W

hen Shaffer and Ballinger, who manages the park district’s natural areas, work with kids

FEBRUARY 5, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

MUSIC

d

esigning playspaces, they encourage the kids especially in the community to play an active role. “We let the kids be the play experts,” Ballinger said. This was their first time working with a group of kids directly through the Chicago Public Schools, so they were particularly excited.

In class, Shaffer and Ballinger joked that Pender-Bey’s class of eighth graders had done most of their work for them.

Her students, who are fondly referred to as “the entrepreneurs” of the school, have been researching and planning for this playspace since the sixth grade—way before they met Shaffer. They’ve conducted a community survey to see what community members wanted to see in a playspace, done research on sensory activities for autistic students, and led nature play sessions with the school’s prekindergarten kids on Friday afternoons.

Most students said that playing with the pre-k students had been their favorite part of the process. “I like working with them because they really like to make noise,” Nazir said. “And I’m a musician, so I can teach them beats.”

But for Jayveon and Winston, the best part was “building it all.” In their survivalthemed playspace, they were connecting a boat to an island with a rope. When I came back to their table a few minutes later, they were connecting the island to a peace circle—where kids can go to “chill out”— with a narrow bridge.

A visiting teacher warmly cautioned them to think about safety for the younger kids. “How high is that bridge gonna be?” she asked. “I don’t want any babies falling off there.”

Without missing a beat, Jayveon held up two slivers of wood to the sides of their bridge. “What if we put up railings?”

Although graduation is nearing, the kids will likely get to see a version of their playspace before they leave. As soon as it’s warm enough, Shaffer and Ballinger will return with real materials and some larger equipment for a “pop-up” playspace design session at Jackie Robinson. The kids will play around with different designs and, later this year, the park district will landscape and assemble the permanent version.

One of the things Jayveon and his classmates heard back from the community survey his class conducted was that “every kid wanted a little park,” he said. “We’re gonna build it for them before we go.”

Emeline Posner is a senior editor at the Weekly. ¬

ERIK M. KOMMER ERIK M. KOMMER

Who Built House

A day and night celebrating Frankie Knuckles reminds us that house music was built in Black queer sanctuaries

BY JEREMY PAUL SAXON MALDONADO

O

n a frigid Sunday afternoon, our congregation completes its pilgrimage to the Stony Island Arts Bank in South Shore, sitting in chairs arrayed like pews throughout its cathedrallike hall. We have come to hear the gospel of Frankie Knuckles, the godfather of house music, just one day after what would have been his sixty-fifth birthday. In the five years since his passing, Frankie may have already been canonized as house’s patron saint; in 2004 the City of Chicago named the street where house was born after him to honor his contribution to the city’s musical legacy, even declaring August 25 to be Frankie Knuckles Day.

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 5, 2020

The event is titled “Frankie Knuckles and the Power of Liberatory Space,” and DJ Duane Powell is our preacher and sound-selector today. Dressed in all black, complete with a dandy hat, he begins his sermon with a humble introduction. Powell is a tastemaker, a music historian, and the custodian of Frankie Knuckles’s vinyl record collection, housed and digitized on-site at the Arts Bank. A projector shares images of these records—many of their sleeves covered with handwritten notes addressed to Frankie—along with photos of Frankie himself. This rotation of loving and timeless images served as our stained glass windows to adorn the experience.

Powell begins his sermon by telling us that house was formed in “Black queer sanctuaries,” an assertion that is met with clear praises from the crowd. These snaps, cheers and affirmations only escalate throughout the program. The palpable energy of the audience peaks when Powell plays his musical selections between anecdotes. The Church of House is present, and they are itching to worship during the “Sunday Service” dance marathon that would immediately follow.

This day-into-night event carried into yet another dance party, this one a benefit for the Frankie Knuckles Foundation. The fundraiser, "For Frankie!", is presented

MUSIC annually by Queen!, the weekly queer dance series at Metro/Smartbar where Frankie was a resident DJ until his passing. Undoubtedly followed by unofficial after-hours functions; the tradition of dancing until dawn has yet to be broken, carried on by the next generation of the devout, all seeking salvation through the collective effervescence that house provides.

And today, the devout are present: when Powell asks who had danced at the original Warehouse (active from 1977-82), about forty percent of the crowd raise their hands.

The Warehouse, a juice bar formerly located at 206 South Jefferson Street, was the holy site of house music’s genesis. Author Stuart Cosgrove describes house, in the style of mixing that Frankie pioneered, as a religion: the DJ is a ‘high priest’ at their pulpit, with the dancers constituting a ‘fanatical congregation.’

After those first few glorious years, the devoted followed Frankie when he opened his own club, The Power Plant. Soon after, the Warehouse changed venues, becoming The Muzik Box, an underground sanctum beneath downtown Michigan Avenue. It was here where Ron Hardy—one of house music’s most influential progenitors— would take up the mantle and advance the evolution of house in his own image.

Powell tells us that these sites were where people came to find “paradise in the darkest spaces,” where these disciples would dance 'til dawn to decadent beats comprised of a harmonious marriage between disco, soul, and gospel music. Near the program’s end, some of the veterans even stand up to share heartfelt anecdotes from the scene in its beginnings, many acknowledging one another. Moments like this are how house music's history is re-remembered through collective myth-making.

Among these myths is the narrative that house “rose like a phoenix from the ashes” of 1979’s Disco Demolition, which Powell contests. The infamous event, which was spearheaded by a local radio personality, promised ninety-nine cent admission to a White Sox double header at Comiskey Park in exchange for a disco record that would be destroyed with explosives between games.

Comiskey Park overflowed with 60,000 patrons, many of whom just brought records

by Black artists—not even disco tracks—to add to the pyre. Jeering “disco sucks,” fans stormed the field, forming a riot and forcing the Sox to forfeit their second game. A marketing gimmick had become the cultural assassination of disco, a placeholder for the Black, brown, and LGBTQ people that built that musical movement.

This act of war would mark a turning point of disco’s impact on popular culture— but elsewhere in Chicago, Frankie Knuckles had already begun spinning his signature tracks. Quoting Frankie, Powell tells us “house music is disco's revenge,” and that house’s cultural dominance today proves not only that disco never died, but that its culture of joyful liberation lives on through its sonic successor.

Powell contextualizes the Demolition with the refrain: “The Black body in motion is never without consequence.” Solemnly relaying the story or Tamir Rice—an unarmed Black boy shot and killed at age twelve by a Cleveland police officer—he tells us that the gazebo, where Tamir was playing when he was gunned down, is preserved in the lawn outside the Arts Bank. It stands as a grim monument reminding us that too often, the consequence for a Black boy to play—to exist—is death.

“One is many, two is a mob, three is a threat,” Powell repeats while discussing assemblies of Black bodies. This was the sentiment at many of the dance clubs in Chicago in the seventies. Even the gay, majority-white discotheques had strict quotas on how many Black or brown people could enter at once, Powell states. Limited by your race, your sexual orientation, or both, there was hardly a place you could go dance. The alienation caused by this racist discrimination and ignorant fear created a need for a space that the most marginalized people could call their own.

In spite of these segregated spaces, house and apartment parties on the South Side of Chicago filled this void. Powell relays that despite being membership-only, they grew bigger and bigger, expanding to borrowed spaces not up to fire code; one venue even burned down. Undeterred, The Warehouse would open in 1975 as a private gay club; you didn't have to be gay to go—everyone was welcome to dance with anyone. A former factory building, 2,000 people could fill its floors in a single night, all seeking the openness of a space that was built for and by Black and gay people.

These underground dancefloors provided a sanctuary where you could be free from judgement, from the hostility of a cold, cold world. House was built, miraculously, in defiance of the darkness of the neoliberal Reagan years, providing shelter to a population plagued by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Imagine the power that house had to liberate the body, free the mind, and heal the spirit amidst that political landscape.

Powell puts on a disco record and we hear “I’m happy, I’m carefree, and I’m gay”

ringing from Carl Bean’s 1977 track “I Was Born This Way.” We are told that this is a strong message because it was from “before it was a time to be proud,” as Powell puts it. This most recent Pride month, June 2019, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, a series of violent demonstrations against the New York City police who raided a bar attempting to arrest patrons, many Black and brown, who were not in compliance with the anti-gay laws of the time. The 1969 riots in New York would change the trajectory of the gay liberation movement in the U.S. forever. A decade later, house’s cultural revolution would be considered Chicago’s “Musical Stonewall,” to quote legendary DJ Craig Cannon.

Powell repeats, “The Black body in motion is never without consequence.”

What is the consequence of hundreds of these bodies dancing together? Political revolution (and an inevitable backlash).

House culture broke down barriers between marginalized groups, cultivating space where people could create community across intersections of race, class and sexuality. You could believe that utopia is possible because house set that example for a brief, golden hour—until City Hall forced after-hours juice bar venues to close at 2am, effectively shutting them down, in 1987.

“House will never die,” I’m told by Mary, a fellow dancer. She’s been dancing to house since she was a teenager. She tells me it takes her on a spiritual journey; I nod my head. “Its power is innate in the body, the beat is tribal, releasing your soul onto a spiritual journey.” Her words are as moving as they are sincere. The music just “lifts you up immediately.” I know exactly what she means, because not two tracks into the dance party, my spirits are high.

Although Frankie is in Chicago’s LGBT Hall of Fame, some house heads, like Mary, didn’t even know he was gay.

This phenomenon is mirrored in presentday consumption of house as a genre of music detached from its queer roots. This retroactive erasure can be explained by the commercialization house experienced during its success in the late eighties, but one cannot deny the music has a queer soul.

“Bad Boy,” one of many collaborations between producer Frankie Knuckles and vocalist Jamie Principle, begins thumping in the middle of Duane’s DJ set. The song’s lascivious pleas hypnotize the now ecstatic throng of dancers, filling the room with steam heat. This is the first original track of Frankie’s played today—his own copy of it, even—and it’s seducing the room with its libidinal innuendo. “Yes we are sexual, too/

Bad boys make life satisfying/because we know just what to do,” Jaime sings, amid solicitations, “Well you might call me a queer/Well you might call me a freak.”

Lyrics immortalized in wax: a testament to the hostile reality for queer people of the eighties, but a flagrant rebuke of those prejudices nonetheless.

Punctuated with moans, Jaime continues, “I know you're looking for pleasure/your reasons are understood/You want to find the real party/you want to really let go/For the right price I will take you/to the place you want to go.” These words aren’t just meant to scandalize, they are anthemic and empowering with their lewdness. Explicitly homoerotic, this track was an unabashedly sex positive staple of the dancefloor at the same time that fear dominated the gay community as it weathered the HIV/AIDS crisis. The chants command: feel free to be intimate, to be fearless, to love.

“Oh, I’m just a bad boy,” I sing along— it’s one of my favorites. I must confess: I’m one of the devout. Covered in sweat and beaming, I am relishing the opportunity to dance to Frankie’s vinyl once more.

A delinquent, I found this church at age twenty-one on a Sunday night at Queen!, Frankie’s last pulpit, not knowing I was dancing in the audience of a living legend.

For years, I would take the midnight train across the city to worship with the Chicago’s house community, many of whom worked in the service industry and had Mondays off.

Years later, this party would win the honor of being named the Best Dance Party in the city by the Reader, prompting hours-long waits on busy weekends.

People line up for a reason: the euphoric experience of togetherness is incomparable.

As much as I have tried to convey the beauty of house with words, you simply have to experience it for yourself. Find it in a record store, in a nightclub, or in some wayward tabernacle, but you will not be able to deny the clarion call of its beat. Until you come home, we will keep the flame burning bright.

Jeremy is a Bolivian-American artist, writer, and performer. Born in Panama, raised amid the cornfields of Illinois, and reared in Chicago’s queer underground, they are currently working on a TV series that dramatizes the rise of house music in Chicago. They are looking for collaborators who are passionate about building a story that centers house culture's architects.

This is their first contribution to the Weekly. ¬

FEBRUARY 5, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

EVENTS

BULLETIN Books for a Buck Chicago Review, 935 E. 60th St. Friday, February 7, 12pm–6pm. bit.ly/ChiReviewBooks

Illinois Supreme Court Forum UIC John Marshall Law School, 300 S. State St. Monday, February 10, 5:30pm–8pm. acslaw.org

Looking for something new to read?

The Chicago Review, a literary magazine published by the University of Chicago, is selling off their old review copies for unbelievably cheap prices: $1 for paperbacks and $2 for hardcovers. Come by and browse their shelves of poetry, criticism, fiction, memoirs, nonfiction and more. Cash and card accepted. (Sam Joyce)

Join Injustice Watch and the Chicago chapter of the American Constitution Society for a public forum. The candidates for Supreme Court in Illinois’s First District, which includes Cook County, will be discussing their judicial philosophy and vision for the court. The forum will be followed by a food and beverage reception.

Admission is free, but make sure to bring a photo ID for entry. (Sam Joyce)

Author Conversation: Mikki Kendall

Afro-Futurism and Black Liberation

Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State St. Wednesday, February 5, 6pm–7:30pm.

Austin Library, 5615 W. Race Ave. Saturday, February 8, 2pm–3pm. chipublib.org

Woodson Regional Library, 9525 S. Halsted St. Saturday, February 15, 12pm–1pm. chipublib.org

Mikki Kendall is the author of Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists, a graphic novel about the history of the women’s rights movement. Her forthcoming essay collection, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot, critiques the failures of the contemporary feminist movement to address the issues of all women. She will be joined in conversation

by Block Club Chicago reporter Jamie Nesbitt Golden. (Sam Joyce)

Yea, Good, Ok! Slow Pony Project, 1745 W. 18th St. Saturday, February 8, 8pm–11pm. $10 suggested donation. RSVP recommended. bit.ly/yeagoodok This show will feature a little bit of everything: multiple stand-up and improv performances, a reading by local poet Spencer Diaz Tootle, and a set from powerpop musical guest Richard Album & The Singles. Beer from Marz Brewing will be available, and Alderman Byron Sigcho Lopez will be making an appearance as well. Admission requires proof of a $10 donation to Bernie Sanders on the day of the show, or making a donation when you arrive. (Sam Joyce)

Join the Blackroots Alliance for a panel discussion facilitated by Katelyn Johnson, executive director of the Action Now Institute. Panelists including Marcia Walker-McWilliams, executive director of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, will discuss current issues within Black communities, as well as their hopes for the future. (Sam Joyce)

Recovering the Lost South Side Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State St. Tuesday, February 18, 6pm–8pm. c hipublib.org Chicago authors Lee Bey and Don Hayner will be presenting their recent books.

Although one deals with architecture and the other with history, both share a common theme: highlighting stories on the South Side that often go ignored. Bey is the author of Southern Exposure, the first book dedicated to the South Side’s architectural heritage, while Hayner penned Binga, the definitive biography of Chicago’s first Black banker, Jesse Binga. (Sam Joyce)

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 5, 2020

VISUAL ARTS Open Mic and Dance Night at the National Museum of Mexican Art National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. Friday, February 7, 4–8pm. Free, RSVP at bit.ly/teen-night-network The Network, a Chicago-based organization that advocates against domestic violence, will raise awareness of Teen Dating Violence Month with a teen night at Pilsen’s NMMA. Come through for a comedy set from Delmy Cabera, a button-making station, catering by Vista Hermosa, and more. (Christopher Good)

The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. On exhibit February 7–May 3, 10am– 5pm Tuesday through Sunday. Opening reception on Saturday, February 8, 3pm–7pm.

Free. (773) 702-0200. theallureofmatter.org

After a well-received showing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Allure of Matter—a survey of contemporary Chinese art that emphasizes its materiality—come to Chicago.

Completionists will have to make a day of it: the show is split between the Smart and Wrightwood 659 over in Lincoln Park.

(Christopher Good)

What Remains: Chapter One ARC Gallery, 1463 W. Chicago Ave. February 7–9; Friday, 6pm–9pm; Saturday, 3pm–6pm; Sunday, 2pm–4pm. Free. (312) 877-5760. dfbrl8r.org Throughout February, performance art incubator Dfbrl8r will host a fourchapter series “on the sacred, the lost, and the forgotten relics of live art.” The first phase—which, across three dates, will include a performance program, an afternoon of “installations,” and a soup kitchen conversation on “the impulse to collect”—will bring together artists from all over the world for meditation on “fixing.”

(Christopher Good)

EVENTS

Conjuring: Black Histories in Jewelry South Side Community Art Center, 3831 S. Michigan Ave. On view through February 28. Open Wednesday–Friday, noon–5pm; Saturday, 9–5pm; Sunday, 1–5pm. (773) 373-1026. sscartcenter.org Under the curation of LaMar R. Gayles Jr. (and with the support of the Society of North American Goldsmiths), the “first ever exhibition focusing solely on Black diasporic jewelry” is now on display in Bronzeville. The show traces this history from artisans like Winifred Mason, thought to be the first Black jeweler practicing in the United States, to the present day. (Christopher Good)

The Petty Biennial.2 NYCH Gallery, 2025 S. Laflin St. On view Monday–Saturday, 11am–7pm, through February 14. (773) 413-9565. bit.ly/PettyBiennial2 The Petty Biennial—a multifocal, multisite happening— highlights “the connective tissue of social systems” to challenge artworld conventions. At Pilsen’s NYCH, you can find artwork by Carlos Barberena, Liz Gomez, Jennifer Ligaya, Damon Locks, Zakkiyyah Najeebah, and Yasmin Spiro.

(Christopher Good)

Tender as the Language Ignition Project Space, 3839 W. Grand Ave. On view by appointment through February 22. acreresidency.org In her second solo exhibition in Chicago, installation artist Yesenia Bello interrogates language and bilinguality through sculpture. These works, curated for this show by Elizabeth Lalley, evoke her account of the word: something “nonlinear and kinetic.” (Christopher Good)

MUSIC Drag Prom: Dance Party Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Saturday, February 15, 7pm. $20. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com Thalia Hall is hosting Drag Prom, for

“queens, kings, and everyone in between.”

The night will be hosted by drag queen Auntie Heroine, who will keep the dancing and singing going until the early hours.

There will be performances from the house band Live Band Karaoke, and artists Hinkypunk, Abhijeet, Tenderoni, and Wanda Screw. Attendees are encouraged to dress up. ( Jade Yan)

Body The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. W. Sunday, February 9, 10pm–2am. Free with RSVP until midnight; $5 without RSVP. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com A weekly occurrence, Body offers the chance to dance to Afro-Caribbean music.

This Sunday’s dance night will include music played by local DJ TYN MAN. Dance lessons and exhibitions will also be provided alongside the tunes, by the night’s host Dance Hall Queen MIGHTY. ( Jade Yan)

Sunday Service with Duane Powell Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Sunday, February 9, 3pm–7pm. Free.

(312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org Despite its name, this Sunday service will not be in a church. Duane Powell’s Sunday Service is a daytime dance party, inviting everyone to come and move to a mix of house, soul, and disco. Cocktails, beer, wine and non-alcoholic beverages can be bought on-site. This event happens every second and third Sunday of the month. ( Jade Yan)

AACM with Special Guest Ari Brown Logan Center, 915 E. 60th St. Saturday, February 15, 7pm. Free. (773) 702-2787. arts.uchicago.edu The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) will be bringing a wide range of Black music styles, from Africa to the USA over many different eras, into one room. This show will feature jazz saxophonist and pianist Ari Brown, who has been a member of AACM since 1971. Given AACM’s taste for the unconventional, audiences should expect innovative and exciting performances. ( Jade Yan)

FEBRUARY 5, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

EVENTS

FOOD & LAND Farmers Markets Saturdays: 61st St. Farmers Market, Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. February 8, March 14, April 11, 9am–2pm. This market accepts Link/SNAP & Link Match. experimentalstation.org/market Sundays: Pilsen Community Market Blue Island Ave. and 18th St. February 9, 11am–3:30pm. facebook.com/pilsenmarket Pilsen Community Market strives to provide fresh, quality farm products, arts and crafts, music and information to a diverse community while embracing and connecting with surrounding neighborhoods. With an educational mission centered on sourcing and sustainability, PCM is a community market first, looking to connect local artisans, farmers and makers to local consumers, as well as provide a meeting place for the community to come together. PCM is comprised of an entirely minority board.

(AV Benford) Multiple Days: Farm on Ogden Food Stand, 3555 W. Ogden Ave. Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11am–7pm; Wednesdays, Fridays, & Saturdays, 10am– 6pm. http://bit.ly/ogden_farm Farmers Stand / Mercado De Cultura A Cup of Joe (reboot), 6806 W. Archer Ave. Saturdays and Sundays, . 9am – 4pm. http:// bit.ly/joemercado Presented by A Cup of Joe, Farmers Stand / Mercado De Cultura promises vendors selling fresh tamales, custom jewelry, clothing, locally grown vegetables, produce, live music, and much more. A Cup of Joe Reboot is a coffee house concept that came about because the owner couldn’t find any cool and hip coffee houses on the outhwest Side. They found themselves always traveling to the North Side of Chicago for a good cup of coffee, an open mic night, or a free comfortable work space. The idea of the space is to provide a space where artists have a platform where they could express themselves without limitations.

(AV Benford)

Saturday Community Visioning Sessions 2020 Green ERA Chicago, Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, 9525 S. Halsted St..

Saturday, February 22, March 28, April 25, May 23, June 27, July 25, 11:30am–1pm. http://bit.ly/greenera Presented by Green ERA Chicago and the Urban Grower Collective, Saturday Community Visioning Sessions 2020 promises to be a forum where discussions about the educational, economic, and environmental opportunities that the Green Era Urban Farm and Energy Collective will bring to the Greater Auburn Gresham community and the South Side of Chicago.

Each month there will be presentations and opportunities to network with aligned individuals and emerging enterprises.

Interest areas include: education programs, farmers market and community gardens, jobs, planning ecological spaces, and “other ideas we dream up together.” (AV Benford)

Chicago Tool Library Volunteer Orientation 1048 W. 37th St., Suite 102. Sunday, February 16. 10am–11:30am. Tool library open Thursdays 4pm–7pm and Sundays 10am–3pm. chicagotoollibrary.org The Bridgeport-based Chicago Tool Library opened its doors at the end of August last year and since then has been supplying its members with all sorts of handy (and otherwise pricey!) gadgets from bench grinders to slow cookers.

Membership is on a sliding scale and the whole 1,000 square feet of tool heaven is entirely volunteer-run and donationsupported. If you’re looking to support accessible and communal home tinkering, show up for their upcoming volunteer training and get involved. (Sarah Fineman)

Midwest Urban Farmers Summit 4459 S. Marshfield Ave. Saturday, February 15, 8:30am and Sunday, February 16, 6:30pm. http://midwesturbanfarmers.org The Urban Canopy and Advocates for Urban Agriculture present the fourth

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 5, 2020

iteration of a come-one-come-all gathering for urban farmers from Chicago and other cities around the Midwest. Small farmers operating within cities face their own set of trials, tribulations, and joys, and the MWUF Summit serves as a needed space for community-building and sharing. This year’s summit focuses on economic viability, productivity, and equity— register for free participation in two days of discussions on beekeeping, grain rotation, racial equity in urban ag, incorporating indigenous knowledge into agricultural practice, and more. (Sarah Fineman)

Ave. Monday, February 10, 10am–1pm.

Garfield Boulevard, S. State St. and E. Garfield Blvd. Friday, February 14, 10am– 1pm. openlands.org/trees/forestry-events

A Very Environmental Justice Valentine’s Day

David Wallace-Wells: The Uninhabitable Earth

2445 S. Spaulding Ave. Thursday, February 6.

5:30pm–6:45pm. lvejo.org

Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St. Monday, February 10, 6pm–7pm.

Free. chipublib.org

The Little Village Environmental Justice Organization and their community are all about loving and appreciating Mother Earth, and what better time to express that than Valentine’s Day season?

LVEJO Fellow Kristen Jeré will lead an event to write earthy poetry and draw up Gaia-appreciation valentines inspired by the values of the environmental justice movement. (Sarah Fineman)

NATURE The Underground Railroad South of Chicago Historic Pullman Visitor Center, 11141 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Sunday, February 9, 3pm–5pm. Free. nps.gov/pull/planyourvisit/ calendar.htm Local author Larry McClellan, emeritus professor of sociology and community studies at Governors State University in the south suburbs and an expert on the Underground Railroad in Northern Illinois, will be presenting his decades of research on the freedom seekers who traveled through Chicagoland on their way north to Canada and freedom. This event will be followed by a Q&A and book signing, and refreshments will be served. (Sam Joyce)

Openlands Pruning Workdays Kennedy Park, W. 114th St. and S. Artesian

It may be winter, but Chicago’s trees still need regular maintenance. Openlands’s TreeKeepers will be pruning trees along the south side of Kennedy Park, as well as along Garfield Boulevard. Make sure to bring your gloves, a water bottle, and eye protection; bringing your own tools is helpful, but a limited number will be available to borrow. (Sam Joyce)

David Wallace-Wells is a deputy editor at New York magazine and author of The Uninhabitable Earth, a New York Times best-selling book that explores how our lives will have to change in order to adapt to climate change. He’ll be joined in conversation by the Tribune’s Tony Briscoe, an environmental reporter who has written extensively about the effects of climate change on the Great Lakes region. Doors open at 5pm, and seating is first-come, first-served. (Sam Joyce)

Armour Seminar: Dr. Lisa White Field Museum, 1400 S. Lake Shore Dr. Wednesday, February 12, 12pm–1pm. Free. bit.ly/ArmourSeminarSeries In honor of Black History Month, the Field Museum will be hosting Dr. Lisa White. Dr. White is the director of education at the University of California Museum of Paleontology, and will be discussing her work on inspiring and expanding diversity in geology and paleontology. She was awarded the 2008 Bromery Award from the Geological Society of America for her work to open the field of geoscience to minority groups. This event is open to the public, and museum admission is not required to attend.

STAGE & SCREEN

Elizabeth Kolbert: The Sixth Extinction

Love Letters

Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St. Wednesday, February 19, 6pm– 7:30pm. Free. chipublib.org

Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. February 13–16. Thursday–Saturday, 7:30pm; Sunday, 2:30pm. $24, $22 BAC members. (773) 445-3838. beverlyartcenter. org

The culminating event of this year’s One Book, One Chicago event series features the author of the 2019-2020 One Book, One Chicago selection: New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction. Kolbert’s book is based on a combination of field reporting and natural history, and won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. She will be joined in conversation by Donna Seaman, editor for adult books at Booklist. Doors open at 5pm, and seating is first-come, first-served. Books will be available for purchase, and Kolbert will autograph books following the program. (Sam Joyce)

Celebrate Valentine’s Day by going to see the Beverly Art Center’s production of Love Letters, A. R. Gurney’s classic tale of a lifelong romance maintained over letters.

Part of Chicago Theatre Week 2020, the show is sure to add the theatrical flair your Valentine’s weekend was missing—and will maybe even get you writing letters instead of texting. (Michael Wasney)

Radical Love Film Row Cinema, 1104 S. Wabash Ave. Monday, February 17, 6pm–10pm. $29 general admission. (773) 772-7248. freestreet.org All our welcome at Free Street Theater’s Radical Love, a soirée to celebrate the five decades that the organization has sought to bring inclusivity and accessibility to the

Chicago theater scene. Attendees can enjoy beer, wine, and hors d’oeuvres as they view the world premiere of the organization’s documentary, Free Street Theater: 50 Years of Joy & Justice. (Michael Wasney)

Devotional Forms: Films by Nathaniel Dorsky Logan Center for the Arts, Screening Room 201, 915 E. 60th St. Friday, February 7, 7pm. Free. (773) 702-8596. filmstudiescenter. uchicago.edu Catch some of the experimental filmmaking great Nathaniel Dorsky’s films when they come to the Logan Center for the Arts. Hours for Jerome (1982), Alaya (1987), and Triste (1996) will all be screened back to back. Fana of the artist— who notoriously resisted having his films digitized—will jump at the opportunity to view his hard-to-find earlier work.

(Michael Wasney)

Yin He Dance: Lunar New Year Celebration Logan Center for the Arts, Performance Hall,

915 E. 60th St. Sunday, February 9, 2pm.

Free. (773) 702-2787. arts.uchicago.edu Don’t miss this Lunar New Year bash at the Logan Center for the Arts. New Year celebrants will have the chance to watch a variety of traditional Chinese dances and participate in hands-on activities. The whole family is sure to have a good time while ushering in the Year of the Rat. (Michael Wasney)

Spoken Word Cafe the Musical Harold Washington Cultural Center, 4701 S. Martin Luther King Dr. Thursday, February 15, doors 9am, show 10am. $25. VIP reception at 5pm. (773) 373-1900. bit.ly/spoken-wordcafe Come watch Spoken Word Cafe the Musical, produced and directed by Jimalita Tillman and put on by Broadway in Bronzeville. The event will feature Khali B. Arthur’s Barnes Jr., Kiley “Analogue” Soul, and more. Come back in the evening to have a good time at the VIP reception. (Michael Wasney)

5 Chicago Locations

Midway Merrionette Park Bridgeport North Riverside (coming soon!)

Oak Lawn