SSW 02.24.16

South Side Weekly Call for Weekly Lit Submissions The Weekly plans to begin publishing original poetry by South Side residents on a regular basis.

Submit your work for consideration at lit@southsideweekly.com

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 24, 2016

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists.

Editor-in-Chief Osita Nwanevu Executive Editor Bess Cohen Managing Editors Jake Bittle, Olivia Stovicek Politics Editor Christian Belanger Education Editor Mari Cohen Music Editor Maha Ahmed Stage & Screen Julia Aizuss Editor Visual Arts Editor Corinne Butta Editor-at-Large Emeline Posner Contributing Editors Will Cabaniss, Sarah Claypoole, Eleonora Edreva,

Lewis Page, Hafsa Razi, Sammie Spector Video Editor Lucia Ahrensdorf Social Media Editors Austin Brown, Emily Lipstein, Sam Stecklow Web Editor Andrew Koski Visuals Editor Ellie Mejia Deputy Visuals Editors Ellen Hao, Thumy Phan Layout Editor Baci Weiler Senior Writer: Stephen Urchick Staff Writers: Olivia Adams, Sara Cohen, Christopher Good, Emiliano Burr di Mauro, Michal Kranz, Kristin Lin, Zoe Makoul, Sonia Schlesinger, Darren Wan Staff Photographers: Juliet Eldred, Finn Jubak, Alexander Pizzirani, Julie Wu Staff Illustrators: Javier Suarez, Addie Barron, Jean Cochrane, Lexi Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu, Zelda Galewsky, Seonhyung Kim Editorial Interns

Gozie Nwachukwu, Kezie Nwachukwu, Bilal Othman

Webmaster Publisher

Sofia Wyetzner Harry Backlund

The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring, with breaks during April and December. Over the summer we publish monthly.

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

Cover photo by Olivia Adams

Check out South Side Weekly Radio at soundcloud.com/south-side-weekly-radio

IN CHICAGO 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 Who Run the World?

In what simply must be seen as an attempt to stay relevant in the national race debate, Louis Farrakhan, the militant longtime leader of the Nation of Islam, has offered to protect Beyoncé if the police will not. This pronouncement comes after some police unions called on their officers to boycott the security detail of Beyoncé’s Formation World Tour because of the singer’s Black Panthers-themed Super Bowl performance, which many conservative commentators have called “anti-police.” It’s worth noting that the video for Beyoncé’s new song “Formation” contains a shot of a Nation of Islam member selling bean pies, and—if you’re really looking for patterns—that Kanye West’s new album contains not one but two references to Farrakhan and the Nation. No word on how the Nation’s all-male security detail and generally questionable views about equality between the sexes mesh with Beyoncé’s intersectional feminism, though.

More Minorities in CPD The Sun-Times reported this Monday that, despite a rough year all around, the Chicago Police Department attracted a record number of minority applicants for its entrance exam, which is scheduled for the weekend of April 16 and 17. The success appears at least in part to be due to an expensive advertising campaign the Emanuel administration contracted out to a communications firm founded by UofC politics baron David Axelrod, though Axelrod has since left the firm. The $100,000 ad blitz put together by the company was a roaring success; there was a ten percentage-point increase in the number of Hispanic applicants since the 2013 outreach campaign.

Nevertheless, the total number of applicants was down over 5,000 from

2013, and Alderman Anthony Beale remained cautious, saying, “You can have thirty percent minority applicants and only five percent of the actual hires. I want to follow it and see what the end result is.”

Spotlight on BYP100 This Monday, Chicago magazine published an article and accompanying illustrations by Darryl Holliday and Jamie Hibdon about Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100). The article opens with a powerful image: most of a room of two hundred people left in the middle of an “unelected” Chicago Police Board meeting in December, showing the organizing power BYP100 maintains, despite the relative youth of the organization, and of the majority of its members. The article details the history of BYP100, from its conception at the University of Chicago in 2004 to the recent announcement of the success of the “Trauma Center Now” campaign. Holliday describes BYP100 as having a “decidedly radical” agenda, firmly rooted in the actions of black queer women, and having a strong sense of community, probably rooted in its even stronger organizational structure. Many “old guard” activists—including Reverend Jesse Jackson and U.S. Representative Bobby Rush—exist on the other side of a generational divide from BYP100.

Cathy Cohen, chair of the political science department at the UofC and leader of the original Black Youth Project, weighs in on the contention over passing the baton: “It’s a generational shift but also an ideological shift in terms of who’s doing the work—we’re reimagining black leaders and reimagining black politics.”

Darryl Holliday is on the board of the South Side Weekly.

IN THIS ISSUE how do you score a school?

"We were told to meet a standard and we met it." olivia adams...4

black history month

“And there’s good hustle and there’s bad hustle: he’s a good hustle.” as told to bess cohen...12

paper trail

death and taxes

“There's a lot at stake.” hafsa razi...7

“That’s all that’s really guaranteed in this world, you know?” austin brown...11

a race to claim justice

“Signs saying “Fire Alvarez” and “#Bye Anita” were held up by students sitting in the audience.” anne li...8

choose (black) chicago

“The reason behind creating it at all is to celebrate my own community.” michal kranz...12

staging social studies

“How can we claim this country to be a meritocracy when so much prosperity stems from privilege?” ariella carmell...14 becoming a better neighbor

“It won’t happen unless people fight for it.

Nothing does.” christian belanger...15 hyde park fashion rush

“Hyde Park is climbing up the bourgeoisie ladder.” a.k. agunbiade...17

FEBRUARY 24, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

How Do You Score a School?

Students and administrators at Amandla Charter School argue that it deserves to stay open

BY OLIVIA ADAMS

“Q

uiz on Chapter Nine!”

The voice of Amandla Charter School CEO (and twelfth grade teacher) Jennifer Kirmes reverberated through a locker-lined hallway of Amandla’s fourth floor. Despite classes having ended over two hours ago, students were still milling about, waiting for their siblings or for a ride home.

Christian Davis, a parent of an eleventh grade Amandla student and lifelong resident of Englewood, where Amandla is located, called the school “my little village.”

“The kids have somewhere positive to go,” said Davis. “Truthfully. We don't have a YMCA in the neighborhood, or a field house that's really safe. Seeing your kid come from school being totally happy…you know they’re safe.”

However, Davis may no longer be able to rely on Amandla as a safe place in the community. On October 26, 2015, Chicago Public Schools released a press announcement titled “CPS Announces More Rigorous Charter School Accountability Policy.” Ten schools were listed as in danger of closure based on the new policy, pending its approval. The press release said that the new policy was intended to “hold charters to the same academic standards as district-run schools.” At the November 18 Board of Education meeting, three of those schools were condemned to closure following the 201516 school year, and Amandla was one of them.

All three of those schools—Amandla, Betty Shabazz Charter School, and the Bronzeville Lighthouse Charter School—are located on the South Side. Both the schools themselves and other education organizations in Chicago have spoken out against CPS’s methods for deciding on the closures. In the case of Amandla, school officials dispute the fairness of CPS’s decision.

Even a traditionally anti-charter group, Raise Your Hand (RYH), has vouched for the school.

While the debate over public education in Chicago is often framed as a black-and-white fight between pro- and anticharter groups, that framing obscures the distinctions between individual schools and their respective roles in the community. As parents and community members protest this charter school’s closing just as others protested the mass closing of public neighborhood schools in 2012, the debate over Amandla’s place in Englewood raises questions about the best way to evaluate a school.

N

amed after a Xhosa word meaning “power,” Amandla Charter School opened in 2008, as the brainchild of five teachers at Robeson High School in Englewood, a public neighborhood school. The effort was community-based: the founders knocked on doors throughout the neighborhood. Davis noted over the phone that she heard about the school’s great reputation from one of her neighbors, and decided to check it out herself.

“When we first went there for the tour, the whole environment was so inviting,” Davis said. “I mean, they took us in just like we were family.” Her eleventh-grade daughter has been a student there since fifth grade.

Amandla administrators pride themselves on accepting all students, regardless of their circumstances. According to the 2015 Illinois School Report Card, 21.2 percent of Amandla students are eligible for special education services, and 26.2 percent are homeless. 97.5 percent of Amandla’s students are low-income.

Amandla's special education programming has a special place at the school.

“They help him a lot,” said Theresa Clark, the parent of Robert, a special needs student.

“He’s at a point where he’s comfortable there, and to take him and put him somewhere else would be really devastating. Every other school I ever put him in, he’s had nothing but problems.”

Amandla served only one fifth-grade class when it first opened, and has recruited new fifth grade classes every year since 2008. At the end of the 2015-16 school year, Amandla will be graduating its first, and perhaps last, senior class. The decision to include such a wide range of grade levels—five through twelve—came from statistical data regarding the effect that transition periods have on student performance.

Amandla CEO Jennifer Kirmes noted that the eighth- to ninth-grade transition proves particularly difficult for many students. Because the students at Amandla stay in one building during this time, Amandla supporters claim the transition is easier. “[It’s] because she still had the same teachers,” Davis said of her child. “She’d still be in an environment that she’s used to and comfortable with. She’ll still have the same friends, and nothing really has to change.”

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 24, 2016

The school is a single-site charter school— the equivalent of a mom-and-pop establishment compared to popular charter networks in Chicago like the well-known Noble School Network. Amandla leaders maintain that inclusive measures like accepting all students and using restorative justice instead of harsh discipline and expulsion sets the school apart from other charter schools. When Amandla first opened, the administration used a demerit-based system that was more rigid and systematic than its current system, the school’s principal, Alyssa Nickow, explained. The new system, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), was developed by the education development organization Safe and Civil Schools. It focus-

Charter School Commission as an appeal of the CPS charter recommendation, which includes a memorandum arguing the case to keep the school open, in addition to various other pertinent documents. One of those documents was a December 2014 email from Jack Elsey, former chief of CPS’s Office of Innovation and Incubation, which stated that Amandla needed to achieve a School Quality Rating Policy (SQRP)—the annual rating system CPS uses to monitor school performance—rating of less than a 3 in order to be removed from the academic warning list. At the time, Amandla had a rating of 3, the worst rating on a 5-point scale that spreads from 1+ to 3, with 1+ being the best score. The Amandla appeal document ac-

"When they said it was gonna be closed, I said I'd chain myself to the doors, so all them kids can stay there."

—Christian Davis, Amandla Charter School parent es on individualized positive reinforcement and restorative discipline, so that students who fail to meet expectations are required to do things like school cleanup and relationship counseling in order to remedy their conflicts. It’s a staple of the single-site school and was introduced as school-wide policy about three years ago. Nickow said PBIS helps students learn to do better in the future, as opposed to a punitive system that is “penalizing them for past behavior.”

“PBIS is difficult. It requires a lot of relationship building, it requires a lot of detailed knowledge of your students and their needs,” Nickow said. “It's difficult work, but we’re a single-site charter school that's focused on those close relationships. So it's really a good fit for us.”

M

uch of the back-and-forth between CPS and Amandla over the school’s future is recorded in a 734-page document that Amandla submitted to the Illinois

knowledges this poor performance, but says it’s because the rating came when the school was in the midst of changes in the 2013-2014 year, including a new policy of accepting new students in all grades, a switch to their new discipline strategies including PBIS and restorative justice, and the inaugural year of the new NWEA assessment.

Alongside their initial placement on academic warning in December 2014, Amandla’s staff was asked to provide a remediation plan that outlined in detail the specific goals the school planned to achieve by the next academic year. CEO Kirmes and Nickow told the Weekly that they both considered creating the plan a no-brainer; they always create a similar roadmap for the year including academic goals.

In the spring of 2015, the SQRP ratings for the 2014-15 school year were released—Amandla earned a 2. During summer 2015, Amandla participated in the Chicago Education Fund’s

EDUCATION

failed to successfully implement a plan for improvement.

A

OLIVIA ADAMS

Principal Alyssa Nickow (right) and CEO Jennifer Kirmes (left).

Summer Design program, and won grant funds for the implementation of their project focused on making the eighth- to ninth-grade transition easier.

Then, on October 26, 2015, Kirmes says she received a phone call from Sagar Gokhale, a then-staff member at the CPS Office of Innovation and Incubation. It was bad news: a press release for the new Charter Accountability Policy would be announced in the next two hours, and this new policy would be up for a board vote at the next meeting, just three days later.

Although Amandla had achieved the previous benchmark required to exit the academic warning list and remain protected from closure, the approval of this new policy would render them still vulnerable to a board vote on the future of their charter. The press release announced that “any charter that has a Level 3 SQRP rating, a two-year SQRP point value average of 2.5 or lower, or a Level 2 rating in three consecutive years will be placed on the Academic Warning

List.” Amandla’s SQRP rating for 2015 was a 2. In the 2013-14 year, however, it had earned a 3, rendering it ineligible for removal from the academic warning list based on the new policy.

CEO Kirmes received a follow-up email on Thursday, October 29 at around 1pm.

Gokhale’s email, included as an exhibit in the Amandla appeal, stipulated that Amandla staff were required to send “already existing documentation, evidence, and/or artifacts of the implementation and monitoring activities that you outlined in the Remediation Plan” by 9am the next morning. According to Kirmes, over a thousand pages of documents regarding the remediation plan were sent to CPS. On November 4, Amandla staff members were notified via a letter signed by CPS CEO Forrest Claypool that the school would be recommended for closure, as it had not successfully implemented its remediation plan. CPS did not provide further explanation to Amandla.

A CPS spokesperson told the Weekly that

“Amandla and the other schools on remediation plans had a very clear picture of the specific gains they needed to make because each school determined the goals in their remediation plans.” Additionally, this spokesperson claims that the decision to close Amandla “was not based on the new Charter Accountability Policy,” but rather “guided by the Illinois Charter Schools Law.” The law outlines several conditions for closure of a charter, including a failure to “meet or make reasonable progress towards achievement of content standards or pupil performance standards identified in the charter,” from section 27A-9 (2) of the law.

The CPS spokesperson sent the Weekly a document called “Amandla scorecard,” which shows that Amandla failed to meet some of its goals for various measures like test scores and attendance. The appeal from Amandla contests that the scorecard punishes Amandla for setting goals that were too high, and that their inability to meet all test score goals did not mean they

ccording to the Illinois State Report Card, 33.7 percent of Amandla students met or exceeded expectations on “all state tests” during the 2012-13 school year as a measure of “overall performance.” For 201314, 24.0 percent met or exceeded expectations.

At Robeson High School, located just across the street from Amandla, the numbers were worse: during the 2012-13 year, 9.6 percent performed at or above standards, while in 2013-14 only 4.5 percent did. In a letter addressed to all CPS Board of Education members, the Amandla Board of Directors wrote that “Amandla offers equal or higher quality than most of the comparable schools within a 2-mile radius of our location,” followed by a number of academic comparisons based on 2015 SQRP points and NWEA percentiles. The letter also said that they had collected 550 signatures from parents, students, and community members on a petition to save Amandla in only four days.

Not all the data is necessarily in Amandla’s favor, however. The 2015 5 Essentials Survey is a statewide comprehensive teacher and student survey developed by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. One of the five measured factors, “Collaborative Teachers,” evaluates how involved teachers are in the school. Within that factor is “School Commitment,” which includes questions on loyalty and job satisfaction. At Amandla, this factor is a six (out of one hundred), considered “very weak” in comparison to the CPS average of fifty-one.

Fifty-seven percent of teachers at Amandla Charter School responded “disagree” to the following statement: “I would recommend this school to parents seeking a place for their child.”

However, many Amandla parents feel differently. For parents in Englewood, school choice encompasses more than academic performance or college graduation rates. The 5 Essentials Survey also includes information on school safety, where students are asked how safe they feel outside the school, traveling to and from school, and within the building itself.

Amandla students rated their overall school safety score to a twenty, significantly lower than the CPS average of forty-six. However, Robeson High School, located just across the street FEBRUARY 24, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

EDUCATION

"I'm a senior, and I want our school to stay open because I want the scholars [here] to graduate through Amandla's charter school."

—Tasia Smith (left), 18, senior at Amandla Charter School OLIVIA ADAMS

from Amandla, had an even lower rating of eleven.

Kirmes and Nickow said the number one reason why parents keep their kids at Amandla is due to teacher quality and accessibility. “[The teachers are] pushing them to strive for a better future for themselves. I love that,” Davis said. When I was younger, we didn’t have that; they didn’t care, they just pushed you along.”

O

n December 18, Amandla submitted the appeal paperwork to begin proceedings with the state in an attempt to reverse the CPS decision for at least the 2016-17 school year; this past Wednesday, a public hearing was held at the school regarding the appeal process. According to an email from Kirmes, about 250 people attended the meeting, mostly students and parents from Amandla and about a dozen community members. The start of the meeting consisted of presentations to the Commission from both Amandla and CPS staff; most of the meeting was dedicated to public comment. The Commission representatives asked CPS for clarification on the goals laid out in Amandla's remediation plan. They also asked CPS about any specific concerns regarding the charter school’s financial plan; CPS representatives did not articulate any specific concerns.

Overall, Amandla’s staff were pleased with the meeting.

“We felt like the evening was a true representation of who we are as a school,” Kirmes

wrote. “The clear message from the parents, students, and community members who spoke was that Amandla is more than a school, it is a family that needs to stay together for the children.”

In addition to the public hearing, Nickow says Amandla staff also had a closed panel interview with Commission staff in early February, as well as a site visit from the Commission about two weeks ago. According to its website, the Commission must vote within seventy-five days of receiving an appeal; therefore, the Amandla vote must occur by the first week of March.

Amandla’s cause has received support from local community groups, including churches and cafes, and from statewide parent-based public education organization Raise Your Hand.

RYH maintains that it is fiscally irresponsible to support charter schools given CPS’s dwindling funds for its neighborhood and magnet schools.

However, RYH published a letter of support for Amandla addressed to the CPS Board of Education. The letter says that “the current school rating policy does not take into account multiple factors that are critical to school success and improvement, and rests too heavily on limited factors.”

Brian Harris, President of the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (ACTS) argued in a phone interview with the Weekly that schools should never be shut down. He says that the CPS Board of Education’s policy regarding school closures reminds him of a “stock portfolio,” in that high-performing,

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 24, 2016

large charter networks are rewarded, while lower-performing ones, oftentimes single-sites like Amandla, are punished.

“It’s bad practice!” Harris said. “The school shutting down would be hailed by the board as proof that their system works. And we think that’s just not a very smart way to operate public schools.”

Meanwhile, Amandla has mobilized. On November 18, students, teachers, parents, and community members organized an eight-mile march from the school to the CPS central office downtown. Also in November, a rally was held in Englewood to foster more support for the school and the appeal process. In addition, the Amandla appeal document includes over 120 pages of letters of support for the school from those aforementioned groups, as well as Amandla students themselves. In these letters, students spoke of their aspirations for college, their academic progress, and their relationships with both teachers and classmates.

“I have a teacher that used to take the bus every day and it took him over an hour to get to school,” wrote one Amandla senior. “Seeing him on the bus with me showed me [that he] thinks of us as his own children.”

Students also spoke about their confusion regarding CPS’s recommendation that Amandla should close because of its academic performance. Many compared Amandla’s academic and extracurricular programming favorably to their experiences at other schools; one student wrote that she felt “betrayed” by the recommen-

dation.

“We were told to meet a standard and we met it,” the student wrote. “Mixed signals send a poor and shockingly amateur message to both the students of Amandla Charter school and all those who count on the Board of [Education] to make informed decisions.”

Amandla staff have been working closely with parents to find new schools for their children. Enrollment at Amandla has continued, despite the looming threat to the school’s very existence. When asked whether she had found a place for her four children who attend Amandla, Clark gave a nervous chuckle; she’d rather not think about the what if.

“Really, really aggravated with it,” is how Clark said she felt about the Board of Education’s decision. “Because [Amandla staff ] help my children. They’re actually there for them, they actually accommodate them and help them.”

Davis said she is not just worried about where displaced students will go if Amandla closes, but whether these kids would stay in school at all.

“When they said it was gonna be closed, I said I’d chain myself to the doors, so all them kids can stay there, and not take away the best thing in our community,” she said. “There's a lot of death in Englewood, but the one thing that the kids do have in this neighborhood is Amandla. Them kids are totally happy where they are.”

POLICING

Paper Trail

What are the consequences of destroying police misconduct files?

BY HAFSA RAZI

S

omewhere in Chicago, on computer databases and in filing cabinets, sit thousands of old police misconduct records dating back to the 1960s, unused and gathering dust. Soon, they will see the light of day— or go straight into a shredder.

In January, an arbitrator in the dispute between the City of Chicago and the Fraternal Order of the Police ordered the city to destroy all records of police misconduct that are more than five to seven years old. And in November, the Chicago Police Benevolent and Protective Association, the union for higher-ranking police officers, won a similar ruling.

The destruction of old police disciplinary records has been a part of Chicago police unions’s contracts for decades. However, only now have union efforts to enforce this part of their contract yielded results. In the 2014 lawsuit, Kalven v. City of Chicago, the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that police misconduct files are public records, which can be released according to the Freedom of Information Act. In response, police unions filed a grievance against the city, arguing that the preservation of these records, let alone their public release, violated the unions’s contracts.

They were granted an injunction, halting the release of most of the older documents, while arbitration continued between the city and the unions.

Now that arbitration is coming to a head. The arbitrator in the FOP case, George Roumell Jr., is expected to make a final order on the records’ destruction in April; in the meantime, the city and unions are to negotiate over which records will be destroyed. The files will not disappear without warning due to a ruling that the city must notify the media two weeks before destroying any records.

The unions contend that maintaining these files is unnecessary, and a clear violation of their contracts with the city. The city has argued that the unions have been aware for decades that these records were not being destroyed.

“The City of Chicago opposes the destruction of police disciplinary records,” Chicago Law Department spokesperson Bill McCaffrey said in an emailed statement.

“Our longstanding position is that these re-

cords have an administrative and legal purpose that warrants preservation, and we will continue our legal efforts to maintain and preserve these records.”

The FOP could not be reached for comment.

The city’s defense of the preservation of old police records comes at a time when its administration is under pressure to increase transparency and regain public trust in law enforcement. Chicago is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice over its police practices, and next month, Mayor Rahm Emanuel will receive recommendations on how to rebuild trust between residents and law enforcement from the Police Accountability Task Force, established in late 2015 after the video release of the Laquan McDonald shooting.

“The idea that at this moment, these documents and this body of information, which we only gained access to recently through our victory in the Kalven case, should essentially go up in a big bonfire is almost inconceivable,” says Jamie Kalven, a human rights activist and journalist with the Invisible Institute.

Kalven, whose lawsuit brought about the public release of police records, says he should not be overconfident about the city’s success in the dispute, because of the “immensely valuable” nature of the information that might be destroyed.

“There’s a lot at stake,” he says.

According to Kalven, these records are essential for identifying patterns of police misconduct and determining whether accountability methods have been effective.

As proof of the findings these records could reveal, Kalven points to the Citizens Police Data Project (CPDB) from the Invisible Institute, a searchable online database that compiled police misconduct records from 2001 to 2008 and 2011 to 2015, which were released after the Kalven decision. An analysis of that database revealed, for example, that ten percent of the police force received thirty percent of the complaints, and that African Americans file a disproportionate amount of complaints, which are sustained at a disproportionately low rate.

The CPDB has also given context to

ELLIE MEJIA

“These records are vital to our work, and their destruction would pose a great challenge to our ability to investigate these cases.”

—Robert Olmstead

individual cases; multiple news sources cited the database to show that Jason Van Dyke, the officer charged with murder in the 2014 shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald, had twenty complaints filed against him prior to McDonald’s death.

“Just the last four years have been regarded as a kind of unprecedented wealth of police misconduct information,” Kalven said.

“So imagine if we had [records], going back close to half a century?”

These records also hold the key to future investigations of police misconduct that aim to overturn wrongful convictions from the past fifty years. Chicago has a history of serious police abuse, including the torture perpetrated by former police commander Jon Burge and the officers under his charge, who coerced confessions from African-American suspects throughout the seventies and eighties.

Burge was fired in 1993. In 2006, a state-appointed special prosecutor concluded that there was evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt” that torture had occurred in at least some of the cases of alleged abuse. By then, however, the statute of limitations on those crimes had run out; no officers could be prosecuted. In response, the state General Assembly created the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission, which investigates allegations of torture by Burge and his subordinates.

According to the Commission’s spokesperson Michael Theodore, the Commission received appeals in about 260 cases. About half of those cases have been determined to be beyond the jurisdiction of the Commission, which only covers cases related to Burge.

Of the investigated cases, the Commission referred seventeen for post-conviction hearings and dismissed thirty-one; it still has FEBRUARY 24, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

POLICING

eighty-two cases to investigate.

The Commission uses old records to review the evidence and determine whether a case should be referred to the courts for a post-conviction hearing. However, Theodore says, the Commission does not necessarily know which records it will need for its investigation until it examines each allegation, which happens on a case-by-case basis. If old police misconduct records are destroyed before all the investigations are completed, the Commission may find itself in the middle of an investigation without access to the documents they need.

To prevent this from happening, the Commission’s executive director Robert Olmstead reported at a January 20 meeting that he had served subpoenas for the misconduct records and files of all police officers involved in the allegations of torture. Those subpoenas have not yet been fulfilled.

“These records are vital to our work, and their destruction would pose a great challenge to our ability to investigate these cases,” Olmstead said at the meeting, according to documentation provided to the Weekly.

An appeal of the initial injunction, launched by the city and the Tribune, might be able to prevent the destruction of the records; the case is currently awaiting oral arguments in the Court of Appeals. Another, more long-term resolution to the dispute could come from legislation, proposed by State Representative LaShawn Ford of the 8th District, which would preserve police misconduct records permanently (though new legislation may not apply to existing records).

In the meantime, however, the initial injunction has real-time consequences for those interested in and affected by police misconduct. While the arbitration is ongoing, Kalven says, old records of police misconduct are inaccessible to anyone, from journalists investigating patterns of police abuse to prison inmates trying to challenge their convictions.

For now, they just have to wait. While the situation is still unresolved, Kalven says it’s “hard to believe” the records will actually be destroyed. After all, the underlying issue is the question, who has a right to these records: the public, the police, or the city? And on that issue, Kalven says, the courts have already spoken: “This information belongs to the public.”

A Race to Claim Justice

Amid protests, the election for State’s Attorney moves into its final phase

BY ANNE LI

O

n February 17, current Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez addressed a full house at the UofC’s Institute of Politics, which has recently hosted all three State’s Attorney Democratic primary candidates for discussions with students and community members. Alvarez began by introducing herself and the work she has done as State’s Attorney, but her explanation of anti-child trafficking measures and surveillance procedures was overtaken by protestors who had arrived in the back of the room. Around eight people began chants that referenced the Black Lives Matter movement and denounced Alvarez’s handling of cases of police misconduct. As the protesters moved to the center of the room, Alvarez was escorted out of the building. Students sitting in the audience held up signs that read “Fire Alvarez” and “#Bye Anita.” After the chants, speeches, and a brief rap, about one third of the audience walked out of the building.

The passion and anger of the protestors are an indicator of the high tensions surrounding the March 15 primary, an election that has taken on added significance in light of the State’s Attorney’s role in police accountability.

The State’s Attorney’s office houses state prosecutors while also serving as legal counsel for the government. As State’s Attorney, Alvarez is responsible for representing the county’s interests in court.

At the end of last year, Alvarez faced public criticism for her handling of the case of Laquan McDonald, a teenager who was shot sixteen times by police officer Jason Van Dyke on October 20, 2014. The police officers’s accounts of the shooting were contested by activist groups and journalists. In response to a judge’s order, the City of Chicago released the video of the shooting on November 24, 2015. Hours before the video’s release, Alvarez brought first-degree murder charges against Van Dyke, but critics have demanded that Alvarez resign for not having brought those charges until after the video’s release was con-

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 24, 2016

firmed. In light of these criticisms, the other two candidates in the primary, Kim Foxx and Donna More, have both focused on the need to turn a new leaf in the State’s Attorney’s office.

Protesters allege that the long delay in Alvarez’s decision to charge Van Dyke for the shooting was politically motivated. Alvarez has responded that the decision was made prior to the judge’s announcement, but that the charges were not made because the U.S. attorney had not completed their investigation. Regarding the decision to charge Van Dyke for murder, Alvarez stated, “I knew a while ago, prior to finding out the video was going to be released.

I knew what my office was going to do.” Alvarez told the Weekly, “The public reaction to the McDonald case has also made it clear that my office needs to do a better job of informing the public about ongoing investigations.”

The controversy comes in context of criticism that Alvarez has routinely mishandled cases due to prosecutorial bias. Criminal defense attorney Sam Adam, Jr. alleged, for instance, that Alvarez charged detective Dante Servin with manslaughter instead of first-degree murder to “curry favor with” the Fraternal Order of Police after Servin fired into a crowd and killed Rekia Boyd in 2012. Servin was acquitted by the judge presiding over the trial, who commented that Alvarez had mischarged the detective.

Alvarez’s reputation has taken a hit after these incidents. More, one of the other candidates in the primary, said in a speech at the City Club of Chicago on February 9 that “Anita Alvarez has made a powder keg out of this race and it has put our community at risk.”

Still, a poll of Cook County voters released on February 2 shows Alvarez ahead in the race with the support of thirty-four percent of voters, followed by Foxx with twenty-seven percent, and More with twelve.

For each candidate, the race has become largely about personal credibility. Alvarez has pointed to her experience as State’s Attor-

ney in the past seven years, emphasizing her campaign against violence and gangs. She has presented herself as tough, but is counterbalancing her crackdown on violence with her anti-human trafficking initiative designed to protect children. In response to allegations of giving special treatment to officers, Alvarez has pointed to her anti-corruption efforts, as well as her recent creation of a “Conviction Integrity Unit” that will specialize in reviewing cases in which the convictions have come under scrutiny. “I have more than tripled the number of alternative sentencing and diversionary programs that help prevent felony convictions for non-violent and low-level offenses,” she told the Weekly.

Kim Foxx’s claim to credibility is based on her experience working in the State’s Attorney’s office and as Chief of Staff to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

Still, her post under Preckwinkle has led some to call her a pawn of one of Cook County’s more powerful political figures. Alvarez has certainly pressed on that point: after Foxx received the endorsement of the Cook County Democratic Party, Alvarez told WLS, “I owe them nothing. Ask Ms. Foxx what she owes Toni Preckwinkle.”

Foxx grew up in Cabrini-Green and spent her childhood years in unstable accommodations, including a period of time in homeless shelters while she was in high school. “Growing up in Cabrini-Green, I witnessed firsthand the effect poverty and crime have on Cook County communities,” Foxx told the Weekly. In reference to her time working with the Cook County Public Guardian handling cases of children, “many of whom had been abused, neglected, or had special needs,” she said, “it’s these experiences that made me push for successful reform measures that give judges more discretion in juvenile justice cases, instead of immediately transferring juveniles straight to adult court.”

Foxx has based her candidacy around this theme of dramatic reform, emphasizing that

POLITICS

Anita Alvarez

Donna More

After Foxx received the endorsement of the Cook County Democratic Party, Alvarez said, “I owe them nothing. Ask Ms. Foxx what she owes Toni Preckwinkle.” of the three candidates, she is the only one to call for an independent prosecutor in police shooting cases. In doing so, she presents her candidacy as a combination of radical overhaul and continuity based in experience.

More, meanwhile, has positioned herself as a fully independent candidate with no links to the State’s Attorney’s office or the tangled web of Chicagoland politics. She emphasizes that while she is the only candidate with experience as a federal prosecutor, this is her first time running for an elected office. This outsider status led Donna More to state, in reference to Foxx, that, “When Democratic Party leaders heard that an independent former federal prosecutor—yours truly—was going after public corruption, suddenly the hand-picked

candidate of Toni Preckwinkle and Joe Berrios looked a whole lot better than one voters might choose.”

More’s background, however, has also attracted some scrutiny, primarily due to the personal wealth she has on hand from her work in private law. Foxx contends that More “is currently a gaming lobbyist and has been in the gaming industry for the last twenty-five years.”

Remarkably, all the candidates in the primary are women. In fact, Alvarez was the first woman and the first Hispanic to hold the office of Cook County State’s Attorney. Some of the criticism of Alvarez stems from dashed hopes that having a female minority figure in office was going to create more sensitive ties to the community. In an interview with Chica-

Kim Foxx

IAN MOORE

go magazine in October 2015, Foxx said that during Alvarez’s tenure as deputy chief of the narcotics bureau, Alvarez “was someone that a lot of us looked up to, particularly because she was a woman [and] a woman of color.” Foxx’s hopes for increased cultural sensitivity, however, were “sorely disappointed, because it was none of those things when she took over.”

Each candidate presents her own combination of reform and experience, sympathy and tough-on-crime, personal inspiration and purely professional inclination. And it’s worth noting that all of the candidates recognize the State’s Attorney’s handling of police shootings and building community trust as key issues in the primary.

Among certain groups, though, the message often resembles the signs held up at the IOP: anyone but Alvarez. Mariame Kaba, the founder and director of Project NIA, an advocacy group against youth incarceration, says, “I think it’s important either way for people to understand that the problems with Anita Alvarez did not begin with her handling of the Laquan McDonald case. Her job is to represent victims, but she actually ends up being the persecutor for those people. She’s been terrible for the last two terms, and she can’t be gone soon enough.”

FEBRUARY 24, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

In honor of Black History Month, Maséqua Myers, executive director of the South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC), has curated a small series of images from the Art Center’s collection to celebrate African-American history, African-American art, and the South Side Community Art Center’s role in preserving that legacy.

K

eith Conner is a traditionalist; he has exhibited here in the SSCAC at least once before, but it’s been years. He paints portraits and landscapes, and he loves to expose the art community—art collectors and art appreciators alike—to African artifacts. He uses many themes that deal with love and bringing the importance of loving yourself into his works of art. And we can see many of his works here at the Art Center now.

Conner has been painting all of his life.

He’s one of those lucky artists to make a living only as an artist. He has exhibited in places

like the Museum of Science and Industry and the Chicago Cultural Center, and he has been responsible for creating film strips and illustrations for Miller Brewing Company, as well as Black History Month illustrations for Central City Productions on WGN-TV (if you remember those programs from back in the day). He also free-lanced with the Encyclopedia Britannica. He’s won awards as well, the latest one being the Artist of the Year Award for Visual Arts from the African American Arts Alliance of Chicago in 2011.

B. Ra-El Ali - Hidden Colors (Charcoal, Oil & Acrylic) 2015

O Keith Conner - Mother of Eden (Oil on Canvas) 1995

ur last artist is B. Ra-El Ali. He’s a fascinating young artist, mainly because he is so industrious—he has his hustle on. He really knows how to hustle well.

And there’s good hustle and there’s bad hustle: he’s a good hustle. He’s a recent graduate of Southern Illinois University with a BFA in painting and drawing. What he did was get out and network—he hit the ground running.

He has gone to every art gallery that he thinks would be welcoming, as well as those that would not. He’s just making himself known as a young emerging artist. I like the fact that he

has such self-initiative.

Ali works as a mixed media artist because he works in charcoal, acrylic, and oil, and he works on paper most of the time as opposed to canvas or linen. He calls his style of work Afrofuturism. It just means that in just one painting he has layers of three aspects: he uses African symbols and images, adds in American symbols and images, and blends them.

And some of these wonderful backdrops create a futuristic approach; they’re combinations of styles and clothing and dress that we’ve never seen before.

“Bridging Generations: Strong Men Getting Stronger” featuring works by both Keith Conner and B. Ra-El Ali will be on display at the South Side Community Art Center through April 9.

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 24, 2016

MUSIC

Death and Taxes

Via Rosa’s unflinching attitude towards music, the government, and life itself

BY AUSTIN BROWN

I

f you watch a lot of interviews, you’ll notice that some musicians act the way that their music sounds. Jay-Z always sounds stately and contained; Future sounds croaky, mysterious, a little tired. Other artists are the opposite. When I sit down with Chicago noirR&B singer Via Rosa, any preconceived ideas I have about her evaporate. She’s all smiles and warm looks, wearing a casual camo jacket still emblazoned with a sticker from a concert.

“ZEDD 2015,” it says, advertising the EDM DJ presidential campaign-style. When I ask her about it, she says “Oh yeah, Na’el [Shehade, local house producer and Rosa’s collaborator on a new musical project Drama Duo] and I wanted to see the lights.” Her bubbly attitude and apparent willingness to go to a ravey EDM show aren’t exactly what you’d expect from someone who titled her 2014 project for THEMpeople DeathViaLove, and all of whose songs, by her own admission, are “hopeless love stories.”

That’s not to say Via Rosa’s music is too dark, inaccessible, or unfriendly—even her non-Drama Duo cuts, which don’t have the upbeat production that Shehade brings to the table, have a melodic energy to them, a pulse of romanticism that lasts past any heartbreak.

And although much has been made about Via Rosa’s yearning voice, just as worth talking about is her pragmatic approach to production. New York boom-bap and downturned piano riffs tumble over each other unhurriedly, keeping everything from becoming too funereal while making sure you pay attention to the showstopper in charge. She layers on reverb and a “telephone effect” in her vocals, prioritizing sound over lyric except when she suddenly lands on one of her simple observations: “I love you but it’s not enough,” for example, or, “I need you to save me.” She’s full of these lines, and when she records, they tumble out like confessionals.

Via Rosa, though, isn’t carried away with her own talents.

“I’ve been told [by my supporters] that I’m gonna create a new form of gospel music, that isn’t talking about God or Jesus, it’s just going to be gospel music, and I’m just like, ‘Okay…’” She says this matter-of-factly. “I’m just really honest—honest love songs are my

go-to, not by choice—it just happens,” she says. She doesn’t even really listen to gospel music. It just wasn’t how she was raised.

Her relationship with religion is unorthodox in general, but simple enough: “My parents sat me down and said, ‘This is what we believe, this is what the world believes, this is what some other people in the world believe.

Let your imagination run wild.’” So while she feels closest with Buddhism, that faith takes a backseat to her personal ventures into spirituality. Via Rosa dabbles in, among other things, alternative medicines, herbs, and something she calls “manifestation.” On manifestation, Via Rosa says, “Well basically, it’s mostly that I don’t wake up thinking ‘Oh, I need to go make some money.’ What I do wake up thinking is ‘Oh, I need to get some food.’ And then I’ll find a way to make that happen.”

When her self-made spirituality isn’t carrying her forward, the other driving forces in Via Rosa’s life come from her friends and family. She moved to Chicago to spend time with her ailing grandmother, and also for other career-related reasons. The guidance of her parents influences much of what she thinks, even to this day. More influential than those family members, though, might be the artists and friends she’s met in Chicago, all of whom seem to know each other. “It’s great for recording,” Via Rosa says, “because you get in there and there’s already a vibe or a connection or whatever.” She talks about Chicago’s developing network of musicians in awed tones.

“It’s like, everybody’s doing something,” she says. “This is the place to be right now, it’s very inspirational.” More than anyone, Via Rosa would know: she’s great friends with Jean Deaux, who works with Mick Jenkins; she knows Dally Auston of Savemoney; she works with both THEMpeople and OnGaud Productions on a regular basis. When asked if this network of Chicago artists is a collective, a “scene,” or something different entirely, Via Rosa says “You know, I’d call it a family. ’Cause when you get in trouble, you know the family will all show up to help.”

So much the better for Via Rosa, as she’s been dealing with her own troubles over the past few months: the apartment building she and her mother inherited from her grand-

VANESSA VALADEZ

mother is in danger of being taken from them, either by squatters or by companies who want to purchase and remodel the space. She and her mother have their own plans to make the building into a healing center for women and families, and a safe space in her neighborhood, but various impediments, like renters who don’t want to pay and building code violations they’re only just discovering, have kept this project from becoming a reality. In order to get the taxes on the building paid on time, they have started a GoFundMe, simply titled “Save Via’s Home.”

Every once in a while Via Rosa bemoans the fact that all of this is necessary at all: “There’s no compassion from the government, you know?” she says. “Nothing about how ‘Oh, maybe you lost a family member, or your per-

sonal life got heavy.’ It’s just, ‘you better pay your taxes or you’re gonna lose your home.’”

The mix of realism and idealism so powerful in Via Rosa’s music pops up again when she talks about the government and the way it behaves toward its citizens. A fundraiser she organized recently, heavily attended by her friends and family, was titled “Death and Taxes”—“because that’s all that’s really guaranteed in this world, you know?” But when I ask her where she’ll get the money to run her planned healing center, she just laughs.

“I hadn’t really thought of that! My attitude is always, if it’s meant to stay open, it’ll stay open,” she says. Then, she repeats, a little more strongly, “It’s gonna stay open because we’re gonna keep it open.”

FEBRUARY 24, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

FOOD

Choose (Black) Chicago A grassroots restaurant week celebrates black-owned eateries in Chicago

BY MICHAL KRANZ

L

auran Smith is the CEO of public relations firm PR by Elle77, which she founded in March of 2012, and has thirteen years of experience in the corporate world under her belt. Bernard Loyd is a Chicago native who grew up in Liberia and returned to the United States to pursue a career in management consulting and economic development. Contrary to what one might expect, what has drawn them together is not their business experience, but rather their shared passion for food, black history, and community empowerment, all of which converged during the second week of February in the first ever Chicago Black Restaurant Week.

Smith, who played a lead role in organizing CBRW, says she got the idea from friends in the restaurant business who felt they weren’t getting the recognition they deserved.

“I have quite a few friends that are restaurant owners, and I know that I love patronizing their business, so I just felt like there needed to be a way other people could experience it as well,” she says. “So, I came up with Chicago Black Restaurant Week because I felt they needed their time to shine.”

Chicago Black Restaurant Week featured seventeen restaurants across the Chicagoland area out of the over 123 blackowned restaurants in the city and took place soon after the close of Chicago Restaurant Week, an annual celebration of the city’s food scene when restaurateurs offer prix fixe menus. Unlike Chicago Restaurant Week, however, restaurants participating in Chicago Black Restaurant Week were asked to create a series of specials that reflect the individual character of their establishments. Additionally, rather than collaborating with Choose Chicago, the city’s official tourism board and the organizer of Chicago Restaurant Week, Smith opted for a more grassroots, community approach. “I felt like I was able to do this on my own, and I didn’t need that backing,” Smith says. “I wanted it to be simple, I don’t feel like I needed it to be grand.”

Many of the restaurants that participated are located on the South and West Sides of Chicago, like the Bronzeville Jerk Shack,

COURTESY OF THE RESTAURANT

which sits at the intersection of S. Prairie Ave and 51st near the 51st Street Green Line stop in Bronzeville. Like Smith, its owner and founder, Bernard Loyd, comes from a professional business background, having worked and lived on the South Side of Chicago for twenty years. However, his foray into the culinary industry began only recently. “After spending twelve, thirteen years as a consultant, I decided I wanted to take the skills that I had built there and do for my community what I had worked with many corporations to do, to build enterprises,” Loyd says.

The enterprise he built is a humble and welcoming restaurant located on a once bustling strip of 51st Street, where all the em-

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 24, 2016

ployees are South Side locals. The location was specifically chosen. “Bronzeville is the heart of black Chicago,” says Loyd. “This is where African Americans moved to because we couldn’t live elsewhere, and hundreds of enterprises were created back in the day.

That’s why we’re in this community.”

The menu is simple: customers can get various portion sizes of jerk chicken or pork, complete with a variety of sides to choose from, including a deliciously sweet fried cornmeal dumpling called festival. “Festival is a very popular item in Jamaica, but it hasn’t really made it over here yet,” says Loyd. The half dark chicken, which comes with a side of festival, sauce, and white bread, is satisfy-

ingly cooked and subtly spiced, although the scorching heat of its jerk flavor only becomes apparent about halfway through the meal.

Impressively, the meat stays juicy without getting too greasy.

Loyd says this is because a major component of Bronzeville Jerk Shack is its commitment to providing healthier and more sustainable food on the South Side. “Long story short, food is a key unmet need in this community,” he says. “There is a lot of food, but most of it is not very good food. It’s greasy fast food, highly salted, and so forth.” Loyd says that Bronzeville Jerk Shack has hosted community meetings on sustainability and sources many of the ingredients it uses local-

“In many cases, these restaurants are located in historically black communities and often we don’t get the level of positive recognition that [we] should.”

—Bernard Loyd

ly, some of them grown by the business itself. “We actually have a rooftop farm and we actually source some of our ingredients from that garden,” Loyd says.

Smith says that other CBRW restaurants have made similar commitments to providing healthy, accessible food. “I just like that it’s affordable, the food is cooked well, and it’s healthy,” she says. “We have healthy food in our community and people need to know about it.”

Another exemplary restaurant among the seventeen participants is Chuck Wagon Grill, located at 1120 Central Avenue in Wilmette, just outside Chicago. Smith says that the owner and chef cooks without salt.

“So that’s just one person who is conscious of what he cooks, how he cooks, how he’s preparing his food,” she says. “So it makes a difference to know where you can get good food that isn’t going to have too many extra additives in it.”

But the most important aspect of CBRW for Smith and Loyd is its celebration of black cooking and history and its provision of desperately needed publicity for black-owned businesses. “The reason behind creating it at all is to celebrate my own community,” says Smith. “The reason that it’s held on the second week of February is that in 1926, Dr. Carter Woodson founded the Negro History Week.”

Loyd says that efforts like Chicago Black Restaurant Week are vital for the Chicago African-American food scene because opening and operating a restaurant is often more difficult for black owners than for other sectors of the population, especially on the South Side.

“Black restaurants really don’t have the access to the kinds of resources that a restaurant in another ethnic community might have,” he says. “Banks are still very reluctant to lend in these communities, and in many cases the family and friend wealth is simply not there to support these restaurants.”

“And in many cases,” he continues, “these restaurants are located in historically black communities and often we don’t get the level of positive recognition that [we] should.”

Loyd and Smith think the inaugural Chicago Black Restaurant Week was a success and are already planning for the next one: Loyd hopes to have Bronzeville Jerk Shack participate again next year, and Smith already has plans to expand the list of restaurants.

But Loyd hopes that the event encourages diners to visit black-owned restaurants more often. “We encourage people to not stop at Black Restaurant Week,” he says. “We want people to come out and support us and all the other restaurants that are trying to provide something new, something different, and something a little healthier in Chicago.”

What is public record?

How to use the Freedom of Information Act to get government documents A workshop with attorney Chaclyn Hunt of the Invisible Institute

Saturday, March 5, 2016 1:00pm–3:00pm

southsideweekly.com/workshops FEBRUARY 24, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

STAGE & SCREEN

Staging Social Studies

Lines in the Dust explores who “deserves” a proper education

BY ARIELLA CARMELL

T

he two main characters of Nikkole Salter’s Lines in the Dust, Denitra (Elaine C. Bell) and Beverly (Quenna Lené Barrett), represent diverging potentials from the same source and opposing ideologies of how to achieve success. Both grow up in a poor area of Newark, New Jersey, but from there chance shifts them apart. Beverly attends a mostly white boarding school on scholarship before going on to Princeton and—as she mentions consistently, like a refrain—earning “three degrees.” Meanwhile, Denitra lingers in a local public school, convinced she is going on to Harvard. Her academic performance is high in comparison to her peers, but to her surprise she falters when it comes to standardized tests; she ends up attending community college, where she is placed in several remedial classes.

Through the microcosmic lens of these women’s divergent experiences, the play’s Chicago premiere at eta Creative Arts tackles questions of justice: can success be attributed to actual hard work or merely to circumstance? How can we claim this country to be a meritocracy when so much prosperity stems from privilege? As Denitra claims, “Opportunity is not just about merit—it’s about positioning.”

“We are lovely people,” Beverly insists, when she and Denitra are rebuffed from an open house in the affluent and insular community of Millburn. But Beverly thinks Denitra is a lawyer with a similar background as herself, a persona Denitra is adopting only so she can send her daughter to a school in the Millburn school district, of which Beverly is the principal. Salter makes the intriguing choice of making Noelle, Denitra’s daughter, the “ghost” of the play—the character who’s never seen but serves as the focal point of most conversations. Because of this, she is more symbolic than tangible. She represents the many children in her situation: hardworking and ready to learn, but denied the proper opportunities in their own school districts.

For a play with only three characters— the other being the intrusive and overly eager investigator Mike DiMaggio (Benjamin Todd)—the story is full of such intricacies,

perhaps overly so. The plot takes several unexpected dips at various times, resulting in an array of false endings. The actual ending peters out, leaving no sense of finality. This effect may be Salter’s intention, a statement that these problems persist without resolution, but it comes across as running out of ideas for a more narratively satisfying conclusion.

Therein lies the ultimate conflict in Lines in the Dust: with so much focused on what it has to say, it often loses sight of itself as a play. Denitra and Beverly often seem to act as mouthpieces for their respective points of view, delving into diatribes about their outlooks on fairness and the purpose of education. Bell embodies the weariness of downtrodden Denitra, and Barrett has the proper comportment of Beverly, but it would be difficult for the actors not to struggle with these long speeches, which are not yet natural in their mouths. While their perspectives are interesting and the tension palpable, we often lose sight of who these characters are beyond their relation to the access of proper education in America.

Likewise, the character of DiMaggio adds an extra layer of complexity and a new voice to the din, one that feels somewhat out of place and unnecessary. DiMaggio stumbles into the dialogue with his awkward gait and inopportune jokes. He is adamant on maintaining the standards of a community by not letting the outside (i.e. children from poor school districts—ostensibly bringing with them a violent culture) in. The play hints that this resentment comes from his growing up in an older, different Newark, one inhabited

by Italian immigrants rather than the gangs he claims currently run rampant.

Though DiMaggio is a character of hidden depth, despite his hackneyed sense of humor—somewhat more interesting, unexpectedly, than either of the female leads—he prevents Denitra and Beverly from being more fully realized, the development of his background and motivations taking up space that could have been spent fleshing out the women’s personalities. Much of his voice seems to be a more prejudiced version of

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 24, 2016

COURTESY OF ETA CREATIVE ARTS FOUNDATION

While their perspectives are interesting and the tension palpable, we often lose sight of who these women are beyond their relation to the access of proper education in America.

Beverly’s: the ideal that people can achieve success through hard work, despite lack of inherent opportunity. While his voice would be welcomed in further expanding this discussion, it comes across as too comically antagonistic to warrant any respect as a valuable opinion. He is set so much in opposition to the main characters, that one cannot help but write his views off as mere intolerance and ingrained conservatism. Nevertheless, his motivations—the desire to cling on to an old way of life, even at the expense of others— are compelling. Even if the interactions leave things to be desired, all of the characters still brim with potential and passionate ambitions.

Lines in the Dust is the last in a sequence

eta Creative Arts has held on Salter’s work.

Earlier this season they staged her play Repairing a Nation and a reading of Carnaval.

Like Lines in the Dust, Salter’s other work tends to tackle resounding social issues about blackness in America and the intertwining of race and socioeconomics. Her acute thoughts are tangible in these plays, but in Lines, the pursuit of big ideas comes at the expense of making characters wooden and dialogue stilted. While Lines in the Dust is admirable in its scrutiny of the politics of education, it struggles as a piece of theatre.

LIT

Becoming a Better Neighbor

UofC professor Burt Schultz talks about his work with the Civic Knowledge Project

BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER

I

n 2003, Danielle Allen, then a professor at the University of Chicago, founded the Civic Knowledge Project (CKP). In the organization’s mission statement, she wrote:

The Mission of the CKP is to develop and strengthen community connections, helping to overcome the social, economic, and racial divisions among the various knowledge communities on the South Side of Chicago. We believe that the free and reciprocal flow of knowledge is empowering. Working with our many local collaborators, we (1) Provide educational and humanities programming linking the University of Chicago to other knowledge communities surrounding it; (2) Develop institutional policy for the exchange of knowledge among different local knowledge communities; and (3) Serve as an educational and organizational resource for our community.

After Allen left for Princeton, Bart Schultz, a professor in the UofC’s Philosophy Department, took over as Executive Director of the CKP. This December, he released an essay,“The New Chicago School of Philosophy,” in which he writes: Can you start by talking about some of the goals of the CKP? Danielle [Allen] had this vision for creating a different vehicle for the University to develop better relationships with the mid-South Side neighborhoods. She was really trying to talk about the importance of talking and listening to a diversity of people in a genuine public sphere, as part of being a citizen in a more robust form of democracy. Being open and vulnerable to news sources that you haven’t edited or censored and so on.

In the essay, you write, “In a context of ‘fossilized distrust,’ the simple act of talking to strangers represents a powerful democratic gesture.” A lot of the activists working in Chicago right now might say that’s a naive approach to take, and what you need to do is simply fix the underlying structural problems of racism and discrimination.

What’s the response to that?

I’d actually agree with it, which is why in some ways I think John Dewey is the better model. Dewey was so attuned to the importance of a kind of democratic life, a kind of community, that was both participatory and deliberative. You were deliberating by participating, and participating through various ways of deliberating. He saw that the facilitation of an undistorted public sphere

It must be flatly admitted that the University of Chicago Civic Knowledge Project has failed in its mission. Overcoming ‘the social, economic, and racial divisions among the various knowledge communities on the South Side of Chicago’ will probably take nothing less than the democratic socialist transformation of the U.S., but in any event is certainly beyond the capabilities of a comparatively small-scale initiative such as the CKP.

Nevertheless, Schultz uses part of the essay to detail “some of the paradoxical ways in which, in this context of failure, some signs of hope emerge,” including the CKP’s efforts to highlight the presence of African-American UofC students during the early twentieth century, and the fruitful friendship between Schultz and prominent South Side civil rights activist and philosopher Timuel Black. The Weekly sat down with Schultz on a recent afternoon for a discussion of his essay, the forgotten history of activism at the UofC, and the possibilities of the Obama Presidential Library for the South Side. Schultz wished to make it clear that he was speaking as an individual, not as a representative of the UofC.

was part and parcel of a democratic socialist agenda. He certainly identified himself as a type of socialist. While he was at the University of Chicago, he actually tended not to loudly proclaim his real views.

There is that question of naiveté in thinking that you just go out and talk to people somehow, and it’s easy to make fun of that position by saying that if you have a bunch of academics trying to do that it’s likely to end up as talking at people, right?

It’s not really listening. But if you look at this approach as … something to which we should aspire as a facet or an aspect of genuine democratic community, then you get a better, more meaningful sense of the community and power sharing at issue.

Some of the best things of this nature are really the result of people mobilizing in activist community organizations that might be partly, but only partly, populated by faculty, staff and students. They’re not just identified with the University of Chicago, and there is a much more dynamic interaction.

So in a way those groups represent in part what Danielle hoped to see. For example, in getting the University to take calls for a trauma center seriously.

Do you think that’s a new development, the integration of activism between university members and community members?

What I find interesting about it is that the history of the UofC holds so many surprises.

I had never quite appreciated, prior to the CKP, how difficult it was to just understand, much less come to terms with, the University’s history. Up on our website, we have the documentary about the founding of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). I got interested in that after seeing the movie The Great Debaters, which portrayed the early student career of James Farmer. Farmer ended up coming to Chicago as an activist and working with many different organizations and individuals, like the Fellowship of Reconciliation (and George Houser in particular) and a bunch of University of Chicago students. They just started doing things, such as forming interracial cooperative living arrangements. They were integrating in defiance of restrictive covenants and official university policy. They were the ones who challenged the discrimination that went on in the Faculty Club and the Reynolds Club barbershop.

They developed some of these classic techniques for protesting discrimination in restaurants. So they would send their friends in to a place—they did this at a number of restaurants (starting with the Jack Spratt Coffee House on 47th Street) and at the White City Roller Rink—and they sent in this one group of friends who were all white and they would be seated or admit-

ted or whatever, then they’d try sending in a mixed group. They’d be told they couldn't go in, there was a private party or some such nonsense. The second group would then say, “Oh we're with them.” Then they’d try an allblack group, and the staff would try to turn them away, and they'd say, “Oh well, we’re with those other groups too.” They developed a lot of these really brilliant techniques, applying Gandhian tactics to the problems of racism in the United States. They organized Gandhian workshops on campus.

I want to get your perspective on a lot of the forays made by the University in recent years into the surrounding community: the Obama library, the charter school expansion into Woodlawn, the employer-assisted housing in neighborhoods surrounding the University. Do you think that’s along the right lines?

I think it all remains to be seen. I hope it’ll turn out to be along the right lines. I think something like the Obama center could be such an amazing development, altogether different from any presidential library that’s come before. It could be about the socioeconomic injustices present on the South Side, and feature the South Side communities that made Obama, and Michelle Obama. That’s certainly what Timuel Black wants to see.

He’s been very vocal in favor of bringing the

FEBRUARY 24, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

Bart Schultz’s Recommended Reading List Over the course of the Weekly’s interview with Schultz, a number of works related to the mission of the Civic Knowledge Project came up. Here are some of them.

• Talking to Strangers: Danielle Allen, 2006. A theory exploring the benefits of engaging with strangers in an effort to build civic bonds and strengthen democracy • Making the Second Ghetto: Arnold Hirsch, 1998. A look into how, as black immigrants moved north in the middle of the twentieth century, Chicago maneuvered to keep its neighborhoods firmly and permanently segregated • Bridges of Memory, vols 1 and 2: Timuel D. Black, 2003 and 2007. A two-part oral history exploring the effects of the Great Migration north to Chicago, told through the eyes of immigrants and their descendants • Challenging the Daley Machine: Leon Despres, 2005. A memoir from the iconoclastic, long-time Hyde Park alderman detailing his attempts at reform.

• The Public and Its Problems: John Dewey, 1927. An argument for the value of a publicly engaged democracy, from UofC’s famous educational philosopher • “The New Chicago School of Philosophy”: Bart Schultz, 2015. An essay detailing the mission and accomplishments of the Civic Knowledge Project • “The CKP Remembers 1942-43”: Civic Knowledge Project, 2008.

A short documentary recounting the history of the Congress of Racial Equality on the South Side

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 24, 2016

library to the South Side, but he has also been very consistent in saying this should be the voice of the South Side, and that we’ve got to keep that voice speaking up, because we don’t want it to turn into some mere publicity mechanism for his triumphs in office.

It should be educating, inspiring, really dynamic. Is that going to happen? It won’t happen unless people fight for it. Nothing does.

But it holds the potential to really change the whole picture of how to do urban development in a way consistent with social justice.

What I tend to worry about personally—and I should stress that I am not speaking in any official capacity here, but simply voicing my own views—is not so much the intentions of the powerful players involved, but how the South Side knowledge communities can get heard so that everyone knows what the opportunities are. I think that the Obama foundation needs to get involved with organizations like the Bronzeville Historical Society, which represents this dedicated effort by Sherry Williams and others to preserve the history of Bronzeville, save material that’s vitally important to the history of Bronzeville. She has all of these death records from South Side funeral parlors, an amazing archive of information about life on the South Side and what was killing people.

She has no place to keep it. She's housed in this little cube-like building over by the Douglas Tomb with some extra room down at the Hotel Florence in Pullman. She has been devoting herself to this effort for so many years, collecting all this information.

That’s the kind of work that I think the Obama Center should reflect and honor.

If people come back ten years from now, or fifteen years from now, and it looks as though what happened was urban renewal or gentrification under another name, well, you’ll be getting the same kinds of critical histories you got about urban renewal in the

fifties and sixties, right?

Does the CKP have any projects in the works?

I’ve been the director of the CKP now for ten years, and so I’m trying to ease out of things, and move programs into sustainable paths where they’ll keep going. We’ve connected with this great organization, the Prison and Neighborhood Arts Project (PNAP). They’re following in the footsteps of the great Margaret Burroughs, teaching arts and humanities courses to inmates at Stateville prison in Joliet, a maximum security prison, very difficult to work in and suffering from all the budget cuts. Last autumn, we supported a graduate student in history who taught a course on black history there. A number of faculty, including some from the School of the Art Institute and other institutions, are teaching down there. We’re getting guest lecturers. I’m hoping Tim Black and I will go down there to have a kind of dialogue.

Work like this is important for the incarcerated individuals themselves, but in this case so many of the individuals we’re working with are from families on the South Side or have families on the South Side of Chicago.

We think of it as opening up through the humanities and through this great partner another channel of communication through which people can be reunited with their families through art, through writing projects, and so forth.

I always go back to a conversation I had a long time ago, when I was just beginning at the CKP. I had a very candid conversation with Dan Peterman, a cofounder of the Experimental Station. A very wonderful individual, very devoted to community arts. He was so troubled by the paradoxes that opened the Experimental Station. How can you do this without being part of the problem?

Where you’re really creating opportunities,

"If people come back ten years from now, or fifteen years from now, and it looks as though what happened was urban renewal or gentrification under another name, well, you’ll be getting the same kinds of critical histories you got about urban renewal in the fifties and sixties, right?"

—Bart Schultz

you’re not pushing people out, you’re really being inclusive. I hope that the [UofC’s] arts work will all go in that direction. I don’t like that language you often get with foundations. They want everything to be scalable.

So much is based on local knowledge and certain community roots and people and individuals and things like that. You should be doing good things, even if they aren’t scalable. What’s going to work in Chicago isn’t necessarily the same thing as what’s going to work in Miami. It’s always hopeful, but I guess it’s the same message as with the Obama center: we’ll see.

On Thursday, March 10, 4:30pm–5:30pm at the Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave., the Civic Knowledge Project and the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project (PNAP) will host a discussion about PNAP’s work educating inmates in Stateville prison through classes and lectures. The event will be free.

Hyde Couture AK Agunbiade This column marks the first in the Weekly's monthly series of featured columnists. If you're interested in writing for us, contact editor@southsideweekly.com.

Just five years ago, the enthusiasm Chicagoans had for exploring Hyde Park rivaled only their enthusiasm for Peoria, Illinois. It was abysmal. Since then, people with loads of cash-money, otherwise known as investors, have helped transform Hyde Park into a more socially acceptable locale for North Siders to hang out.

These investments can be seen across industries. For example, after ten long and grueling years of having to commute downtown for overpriced popcorn and overhyped films, Harper Theater opened in 2013, ending Hyde Park’s torturous movie theater drought. A10 on 53rd is not only a Restaurant Week-worthy restaurant, but is also one of the few, if not the only restaurant in Hyde Park that offers valet parking. Yes, that’s right! Hyde Park is climbing up the bourgeoisie ladder. We’re even getting our very own Whole Foods soon.

The fashion industry has also jumped on this bandwagon. To the delight of many Hyde Park fashionistas, the retail store Akira opened its doors in November 2012 after the closure of the former Borders bookstore. As the first major fashion retailer to open a branch in Hyde Park in recent years, Akira became the most prominent choice for women’s fashion in the neighborhood. Some argue Akira’s dominance of the Hyde Park fashion market is due to its amazing selection of women’s clothing and catchy, en-vogue sales promotions like “Doorbusters and Chill.” I personally think it is at least partly due to the monstrous Akira sign that dares passerbys to ignore it while strolling down the street.

Though Akira briefly had a near-monopoly on Hyde Park women’s fashion, it’s no longer the only contender. Numerous small boutiques selling women’s clothing and accessories have popped up since 2013. To get a woman’s perspective, I asked my friends Nisha Abu and Ala Soofjan about Hyde Park’s offerings.

Nisha, a Hyde Park resident, told me she enjoys having The Silver Room and {BU} (Belle Up) boutiques on her route to work, and though she’s bought various items from them for her family members, “[they’re] just a little pricey.” In other words, your wallet may take a major hit every time you shop in these stores, and do not expect “Doorbuster and Chill” sales very often.

Ala, a third year medical student at the UofC, thinks there’s still a lack of clothing options that fit both professional and social purposes. Therefore, she primarily still shops downtown at stores like J. Crew and The Gap. But both Nisha and Ala were very excited about the upcoming opening of the Marshalls department store on 51st Street and Lake Park. “I think once the Marshalls comes,” Nisha told me, “I’ll probably just go there everyday after work and just hunt for stuff. I’m kind of dreading it because I’m just going to be spending money at Marshalls.” I’d expect that many Hyde Park residents share her sentiments, and I hope we all won’t have to file for bankruptcy soon after the store opens. I’m just excited that Marshalls will also provide more fashion options for men, who currently have very slim pickings in the neighborhood.

I expect the investment in and popularity of Hyde Park to increase in anticipation of the opening of the Obama Presidential Library, and perhaps this will provide an impetus for further growth in the fashion options in Hyde Park. We may never get on the same level as the Magnificent Mile, but we should have enough to keep local fashionistas content.

AK Agunbiade is a Nigerian American who grew up in the Midwest. He currently lives in Hyde Park, where he is finishing up medical school. In addition, he's a stand up comedian and maintains a fashion and lifestyle blog at slightlyrefined.com. Follow him on Twitter: @AKagunbiade88 and catch AK's column every fourth week of the month.

ILLUSTRATION BY JAVIER SUAREZ FEBRUARY 24, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

BULLETIN In This Moment: Liberation and Struggle After Prison Reform Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Wednesday, February 24, 6pm–8pm. (773) 3243520. hydeparkart.org Join a dialogue about ongoing prison and policing reform and visit “Weight of Rage,” an exhibition at HPAC that aims to address the same issues. It features works by men who took a class at Stateville Correctional Center taught by community organization Prison + Neighborhood Art Project. Workshops and discussions included. (Yunhan Wen)

#FedUpFriday: CPS Students Rally Against Budget Cuts James R. Thompson Center, 100 W. Randolph St. Friday, February 26, 4:30pm. Free.

CPS schools have been suffering after a series of recent policy decisions, from school closures to staff layoffs. Recently, Governor Bruce Rauner implemented new budget cuts; some students have decided it’s time to rally and fight back. (Yunhan Wen)

2016 Bronzeville Youth 360 Summit Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University, 700 E. Oakwood Blvd. Saturday, February 27, 9am–2pm.

Free for youth. Tickets at eventbrite.com.

The second annual Bronzeville Youth 360 Summit has just about everything worth waking up early on a Saturday for: workshops, scholarship opportunities, free food, and the promise of a “VERY special guest from a VERY popular TV show” (possibly Empire).

Don’t miss out. (Christopher Good)

Chicago Education Expo Crowne Plaza Hotel, 733 W. Madison St. Saturday, February 27, 9am–12:30pm. Free. (312) 504-0094. chicagoeducationexpo.com Looking for some new options for your Pre-K through eighth grader? Check out presentations from over fifty schools, education organizations, and childcare centers. The

expo will also feature a panel discussion with representatives from non-traditional schools as well as guest talks about nutrition and early childhood education. (Hafsa Razi)

Small Business Center on the Road Kennedy-King College, 740 W. 63rd St., Building U. Saturday, February 27, 10am–2pm.

(312) 744-6060. Register at eventbrite.com The City of Chicago’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection will be hosting an exposition designed to alert small businesses in the city to the resources at their disposal. Attractions for this Saturday include a tax clinic, professional headshots, a legal clinic, and makeovers from Ulta Cosmetics.

(Christian Belanger)

African American Read-in Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, 9525 S. Halsted St. Sunday, February 28, 1:30pm–4pm.

To read, RSVP at kaford23@hotmail.com or (773) 509-5058.

This upcoming Sunday, the National Writers Union will be showcasing short readings by African-American authors; slots to read are still available. Light refreshments will be served. (Christian Belanger)

Police and Capitalism: A Socialist Analysis 57th Street Meeting of Friends, 5615 S. Woodlawn Ave. Wednesday, March 2, 7pm. (773) 850-0476. chicagosocialists.org A wide variety of views are currently being aired about policing in Chicago, but what do the Marxists think? At this meeting, members of the International Socialist Organization will share their understanding of the situation.

(Adam Thorp)

Campus Wars: Free Speech vs.

Safe Spaces?

Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Thursday, March 3, 6pm. (773) 752-4381. semcoop.com Supporters of the hard-line position in favor of campus free speech have rallied behind

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 24, 2016

the UofC’s Statement on Principles of Free Expression. Professor Geoffrey Stone, the statement’s author, will consider the issue just south of the campus venue where Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez was prevented from speaking by protesters not three weeks beforehand. (Adam Thorp)

The Pursuit of Happiness: Transgender Equality in 2016 Institute of Politics, 5707 S. Woodlawn Ave. Monday, March 7, 6pm–7:15pm. Free. (773) 834-4671. politics.uchicago.edu Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, will speak at the UofC’s Institute of Politics about the ongoing fight against transphobic prejudice and violence. As a leading activist and authority, Keisling will be sure to lead a vital discussion. (Christopher Good)

VISUAL ARTS Memory II: An Object Roundtable Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. Friday, February 26, 1pm. Free. (773) 7020200. smartmuseum.uchicago.edu Create memories at this roundtable discussion with UofC faculty and scholars from various disciplines. Think about how artifacts and artwork impact our memories of times past: conversation will be based on objects in the Smart Museum’s collection and the recent “Conversations with the Collection: Memory” exhibit. (Anne Li)

Lay a Ghost cornerstore, 1903 S. Allport St. #3F. Opening reception Saturday, February 27, 7pm–10pm.

Through April 3. Free. cornerstoregallery.biz Artists J. Michael Ford, Meg Nafziger, and Caleb Yono take over cornerstore’s new space with a show that doesn’t fail to live up to its name: though ghostly in way of description, “Lay a Ghost” features a group of artists whose work is all about corporeality. (Corinne Butta)

Hyde Park Handmade Bazaar

The Promontory, second floor. 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Sunday, February 28, 11am–4pm. hydeparkhandmade.com Love arts and crafts? Explore a display of clothing, jewelry, sculptures, and more, all handmade by local artists, at Hyde Park Handmade. Buy your favorites to bring home, and check out the farmer’s market for fresh produce while you’re there! (Anne Li)

Paper Protest Workshop with Ellen Gradman Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted St. Sunday, February 28, 1pm–4pm. Free. (312) 852-7717. uri-eichen.com Ellen Gradman, artist and activist, is leading an afternoon of instruction in revolutionary making. All the materials necessary to create your own, personal, possibly radical, Paper Protest will be provided. All “artivists” welcome! RSVP to everychicago@gmail.com.

(Corinne Butta)

Leslie Baum: MOUNTAIN and sea 4th Ward Project Space, 5338 S. Kimbark Ave. Opening reception Sunday, February 28, 4pm– 7pm. Through April 2. Saturday, 2pm–6pm.

Free. (733) 203-2991. 4wps.org Painter and multimedia artist Leslie Baum hopes to transform the 4th Ward Project Space into a “meditation space,” one awash with color and anchored by equilateral triangles. With panoramic canvasses and a Helen Frankenthaler-inspired name, it’s ambitious—but then again, so is all great art. (Christopher Good)

MUSIC Goodbye, The Shrine The Shrine, 2109 S. State St. The Shrine, a historic Chicago club that, for readers of this calendar, will need absolutely no introduction, has closed its doors permanently after a double shooting early in the morning this past Saturday. The club had originally planned to close after Busta Rhymes’s show on February 28 in order

EVENTS to clear space for a planned South Loop apartment and hotel development, but has canceled that and its other remaining shows.

The Shrine appears in at least thirty-one of the forty calendars in the Weekly’s online archives. The venue and its music will be missed. ( Jake Bittle)

Lynn Hilton The Quarry, 2423 E. 75th St. Friday, February 26, 7pm–11:30pm. (773) 741-6254. mobetterjazzchicago.us Internationally renowned vocalist Lynn Hilton will drop by Mo Better Jazz later this month. Having performed around the world, she returns to her native city of Chicago to share her multifaceted abilities. (Bilal Othman)

The Dojo presents Mykele's Mixed-Bag The Dojo. Friday, February 26. Gallery opens 8:30pm, music at 9:30pm. $5 suggested donation. (312) 631-8139 (call for address on day of show). facebook.com/thedojochi This combination gallery showcase and concert will celebrate the birthday of Mykele Deville, one of the founders of the Dojo, a DIY space previously profiled in the Weekly. As with all of the Dojo’s events, this one intends to create a safe, loving space above all, and as the event description warns, “no fuckery will be tolerated.” ( Jake Bittle)

HIP HOP IN HYDE PARK: Chicago vs. New York The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Friday, February 26, 9pm. $10 before midnight, $20 after. 21+. (312) 801-1200. promontorychicago.com PHLI LIFE presents DJ Jay ILLA (Chicago) versus DJ MUSTAFA (New York) as well as DJ LR for a night of retro hip-hop and neo-soul as well as the promise of good food on site in this First and Second City face-off.

(Mira Jaworski)

ESSO Reggies, 2105 S. State St. Sunday, February 28, 8pm. 21+. $7 at door. (312) 949-0120.

reggieslive.com The Chicago musicians known as ESSO—El Sonido Sonic Octopus, that is—distill funk and afro-pop into a potent blend of breakbeat drumming, kaleidoscopic horns, and Stevie Wonder-esque clavinet. Nod your head, dance along, and make sure to catch the hook-laden opening jams from Karikatura and The Limbos. (Christopher Good)

Fantasty Wesley Kimler Studio, 2046 W. Carroll Ave. Saturday, March 12, 9pm. Free with RSVP. 18+. do312.com/fantasty VAM Studio celebrates its one-year birthday with a huge exhibition, featuring live performances and visual art from the city’s coolest underground talents. Prepare for 3D video, performances by Glass Lux, Daryn Alexus, Owen Bones, DJ Taye, Sirr Tmo, and more, and possibly live animals. (Zoe Makoul)

STAGE & SCREEN The Gifted and My Africa Is Studio Movie Grill Chatham 14, 210 W. 87th St. Thursday, February 25, 7pm. $6. blackworldcinema.net The end to BWC’s Black Future Month celebration kicks off with the 1993 sci-fi thriller, The Gift. The night continues with My Africa Is, a film profiling three unique stories of innovation coming out of Nairobi. Stay until the end to be present for a live Skype interview with The Gift director, Audrey King Lewis. (Bilal Othman)

Gozamos presents Gózalo: The 5 Elements of Hip Hop Party Cultura in Pilsen, 1900 S. Carpenter St. Friday, February 26. 8pm–11:59pm. Suggested $10 donation. culturainpilsen.com Having just turned six, Gozamos, a nonprofit and volunteer-run magazine, is launching a series of monthly celebrations of culture and community. The first features live graffiti painting, a breakdance performance, and most of all, a focus on hip-hop. All proceeds go to the performance artists and the magazine.

(Maddie Anderson)

857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org Offended that Michael B. Jordan wasn’t nominated for the Oscar for best actor? Shocked that Idris Elba wasn’t nominated either?

Here’s a venue where you can discuss your thoughts regarding racial diversity in the film industry with Chicago directors, actors, and curators. (Maddie Anderson)

Frame of Reference: An Evening with Christopher Harris Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Friday, February 26, 7pm. Free. (312) 8575561. southsideprojections.org With subject matter ranging from ethnographic daguerreotypes to religious theme park tableaux, Christopher Harris’s uncompromising films have earned him acclaim worldwide. Expect striking imagery and thought-provoking storytelling at this screening and discussion with the artist. (Christopher Good)

Junior League of Chicago Mad Hatters Bessie Coleman Public Library, 731 E. 63rd St. South Shore Public Library, 2505 E. 73rd St. Saturday, February 27, 11am & 1pm, respectively. Free. jlchicago.org

Olympic Pride, American Prejudice The DuSable, 740 E. 56th Pl. Friday, February 26, 7pm. $15. (773) 947-0600. dusablemuseum. org As the 2016 Olympics come up, the DuSable screens a film reminding us it hasn’t always been a joyful event. <i>Olympic Pride, American Prejudice</i> tells the story of eighteen African-American Olympic athletes in 1936, competing against not only their peers but also against Jim Crow restrictions and the Aryan supremacy of Nazi forces. (Kezie Nwachukwu)

Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Sunday, February 28. 4pm–6pm. Free. (312)

Kartemquin Films, Friday, February 26–Thursday, March 3. Free. (773) 472-4366. kartemquin.com Enjoy free streaming this week for the 1974 film, Winnie Wright, Age 11 on Kartemquin Films’s website. Gain insight into the unique perspective of Winnie, a young, white, working-class girl in Gage Park as she comes of age in a world rife with racism and economic instability. (Kezie Nwachukwu)

The Set Speaks

Drop by your library of choice Saturday and enjoy the performance of a lifetime. In an initiative to promote literacy and a love for literature from a young age, the Mad Hatters engage kids aged three to nine using interactive stories. Laugh, sing, and participate all while wearing fun and silly hats! (Bilal Othman)

#OscarsStillSoWhite: A Conversation about Hollywood’s Racial Politics

Winnie Wright, Age 11

Propeller Fund Studios, 4th floor of Mana Contemporary at 2233 S. Throop St. February 8 – March 31. Open Monday – Friday, 9am-5pm; Saturday, 12pm-5pm. Free. (312) 850-0555. acretv.org For ACRE TV’s new programming block, seven groups of artists will take turns broadcasting a nonstop camera feed from their studio. Falling halfway between the schlock of Big Brother and the avant-garde stylings of Hito Steyerl, the exhibition—which will be livestreamed online—promises to deliver everything from #newglobalmatriarchy to soap operas for two months straight. (Christopher Good)

Lines in the Dust eta Creative Arts Foundation, 7558 S. Chicago Ave. February 5 – March 27. Friday and Saturday, 8pm; Sunday, 3pm. $30, discounts available for seniors, students, and groups. (773) 752-3955. etacreativearts.org “Who gets the best education in America?”

This is the question asked by Lines in the Dust, playwright Nikkole Salter’s gripping look into education inequity, poverty, and its human cost. Join director Phyllis E. Griffin for the play’s Chicago premiere. (Christopher Good)

FEBRUARY 24, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19