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2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 22, 2015

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is a 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. Started as a student paper at the University of Chicago, the South Side Weekly is now an independent nonprofit organization 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 Editors Christian Belanger, Rachel Schastok Education Editor Mari Cohen Music Editor Maha Ahmed Stage & Screen Lucia Ahrensdorf Editor Visual Arts Editors Lauren Gurley, Robert Sorrell Editors-at-Large John Gamino, Bea Malsky,

Meaghan Murphy, Hannah Nyhart Contributing Editors Julia Aizuss, Austin Brown,

Sarah Claypoole, Emeline Posner, Hafsa Razi Social Media Editor Emily Lipstein Web Editor Andrew Koski Visuals Editor Ellie Mejia Layout Editors Adam Thorp, Baci Weiler Senior Writers: Patrick Leow, Jack Nuelle, Stephen Urchick Staff Writers: Olivia Adams, Max Bloom, Amelia Dmowska, Mark Hassenfratz, Maira Khwaja, Jeanne Lieberman, Zoe Makoul, Olivia Myszkowski, Jamison Pfeifer, Kari Wei Staff Photographers: Camden Bauchner, Juliet Eldred, Kiran Misra, Siddhesh Mukerji, Luke White Staff Illustrators: Jean Cochrane, Lexi Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu Editorial Intern

Clyde Schwab

Webmaster Business Manager

Shuwen Qian 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 1212 E. 59th Street Ida Noyes Hall #030 Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773)234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly Read our stories online at southsideweekly.com

Cover design by Jean Cochrane and Ellie Mejia, with photos courtesy of the Black and Brown Punk Show Collective and GlitterGuts/Eric Strom.

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

Look Both Ways Chicagoans experienced a delay in their commutes Monday morning as city clean-up crews removed the canine victim of a hit-and-run from the center lane of southbound Lake Shore Drive. The accident happened at 6:40am near North Avenue, although the Department of Streets and Sanitation only received calls about the casualty at 9am. As previously reported by the Weekly, the city has a large coyote population, and every Chicagoan is possibly neighbors with a coyote.

Researchers from Ohio State University have been following one animal, Coyote 441, for the past five years, attesting to the coyote’s ability to survive in the big city. The animals have adapted to urban life and have even learned how to look both ways when crossing the street… or, at least, most have. Natural selection strikes again.

No Justice for Boyd In 2012, off-duty CPD officer Dante Servin approached Rekia Boyd and her two friends, unarmed, for being too rowdy. Servin fired rounds, killing Boyd and injuring another. But last week, all charges against Servin—involuntary manslaughter, reckless discharge of a firearm, and reckless conduct—were dismissed before the defense had the chance to begin its case. Judge Dennis Porter justified his decision to grant Servin’s lawyers’ mid-trial request to drop charges with the “absence of evidence of reckless conduct,” and Servin stands by his decision to act in what he called self-defense. Boyd’s family and loved ones, as well as unaffiliated attorneys and law professors, continue to allege that justice is far from having been served.

The Taxes Were Too Damn…High Last year, according to the Chicago Reader, taxpayers were charged over $44 million for misdemeanor cannabis possession cases in Cook County. State attorney Anita Alvarez has recently changed her stance on crimes regarding the possession of small amounts of marijuana and hard drugs. Individuals involved in violent crime in addition to possession will be pressed with charges; repeat offenders will be given the choice to undergo counseling instead of going to court. The timing of this change of heart is interesting: it comes just as Alvarez’s critics are beginning to talk about running against her in 2016.

Bye Bye Byrdie?

In July 2013, an article in Catalyst Chicago raised concerns about a $20.5 million no-bid contract approved by CPS with SUPES Academy for principal-training services. The contract raised eyebrows because it was the largest no-bid contract made in three years, and CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett had worked at SUPES prior to her tenure at CPS. Two years later, the rest of the world is catching up. Byrd-Bennett took a leave of absence on Friday amid federal investigations into the contract, though she has not been accused of any official wrongdoing. Jesse Ruiz is the new interim CEO, making him the fifth to hold the position since 2010. With parents still wondering why so much of CPS’s money was spent on this contract and Governor Rauner taking the opportunity to air his grievances about CPS, it’s unlikely that CPS will emerge from this investigation totally unscathed.

IN THIS ISSUE packed unpacks

“everyone knows what i’m talking about, right?”

“Frunchroom” is what “front room” sounds like through a thick Chicago accent, Smith explained. julia aizuss…4 bluesy, but bittersweet

[The new guys] can’t be as good as they were, because those guys were the originators. michal kranz…6 teachable moments

“I then realized I had no idea who this child was.” mark hassenfratz…8

five new aldermen from the south side

Curtis’s supporters wore buttons emblazoned with “Lane Closed April 7.” adam thorp, adia robinson…10 qtipoc to the front

“We’re trying to redefine punk as being about survivalism and DIY culture, which are imperative if you’re a marginalized person in this country.” bea malsky…12

“Stuff that you’d want to eat late at night or when you’re super hungry.” will dart…15 revolutionary time

Seizing Freedom is an intervention into the most prevalent contemporary historical narrative regarding the Civil War. sarah claypoole…16 a contemporary harmony

Although the members of the Beverly Morgan Park Community Choir were all dressed in black, the atmosphere was anything but solemn. amelia dmowska…17 APRIL 22, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

"Everyone knows what I'm talking about, right?"

New reading series The Frunchroom comes to the far South Side

BY JULIA AIZUSS

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 22, 2015

S

cott Smith was late putting his daughter to bed Wednesday night, but the Morgan Park resident and editorial director of video news startup TouchVision TV had an excuse for his neglect of paternal duties. The debut of the reading series he’s spent the past few months organizing was the following night. What began as an idea he idly “tossed around” a year ago with friend, writer and artist Dmitry Samarov, was about to become The Frunchroom, a quarterly reading series in Beverly and Morgan Park.

“Frunchroom” is what “front room” sounds like through a thick Chicago accent, says Smith. With it comes, he said, “the whole idea of a place where you tell stories and hear people share their remembrances, or talk about things that are important to them, or laugh, or tell jokes.”

The name hit a sweet spot—an evocation so specific that South Siders would recognize it immediately, while other Chicagoans, Smith hoped, would be intrigued.

This quest for balance between local and universal may be what most differentiates The Frunchroom from the rest of the South Side’s live lit scene. Story Club Chicago draws a crowd to Bridgeport monthly, while Do Not Submit holds open mics in Hyde Park, Woodlawn, Englewood, and Pilsen. Representation on the far South Side has been missing, so keeping the series in Beverly was always part of the plan.

“I wanted to do something that felt really local to the neighborhood,” he said.

He organized The Frunchroom with the Beverly Area Arts Alliance, a group started last year to foster arts in the Beverly and Morgan Park community. Smith has lived in Beverly for five years, but the art scene’s never been so bustling—he and the Alliance directors are fond of calling it an “art uprising.”

Yet Smith’s goals for The Frunchroom also include diversity, not just in the types of stories told and who’s telling them, but

ellie mejia

also in the neighborhoods the audience hails from. The Frunchroom is a reading series by and about the South Side, but also seeks to attract an audience from other parts of Chicago. Smith wants, he said, “to show people all the different parts of the South Side, what it really is beyond what

they may have heard in headlines or on television news. I think the idea that the South Side is of one particular type or one particular spirit is just silly.”

“I think we have an opportunity to have this be a bit of a destination reading series,” Smith added. Residents of the

STORIES

North Side rarely come all the way down to fairly suburban Beverly. The Frunchroom could change that.

That Thursday night, The Frunchroom pulled off its destination aspirations. The side room in O’Rourke’s Office, a Morgan Park bar, was packed with well over one hundred people. The audience flooded the rows and tables of seating, brought in extra chairs, and crouched on the floor and by the fireplace, spilling out the door. Some, unwilling to join the standing crowd, remained in the main bar and formed a semicircle around the entrance, peering inside.

It wasn’t quite the number of people in your typical front room, although the décor was comfortingly reminiscent of the sort of living room where, Smith told the audience, “you sat with your drunk aunt and told stories”: a chandelier, bookshelves, no fewer than ten paintings and three sculptures of horses.

As for the audience in the room, about one-third raised their hands when Smith asked who was a native South Sider, and just about all the standing crowd was from Beverly. “We’re gonna work on that,” Smith offered when his attempts to scout out residents of the West Side drew crickets—but when called, a surprisingly substantial contingent from the North Side cheered.

The South Side residents, though, supplied the most abundant enthusiasm for and rapport with the event’s readers. The five readers, whom Smith met through the years he’s spent in Chicago journalism, all grew up on or live on the South Side. Smith was eager to tout the universality of South Side stories, and though he was right, the power of the readings was rightly grounded in the realities of local experience. Even the most general of the readings, DNAinfo Director of Social Media and Engagement Jen Sabella’s listicle about her “ideal commune,” was inspired by her time at Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School in Mount Greenwood: “When I came out to

my dad a few years ago,” she recounted, “he asked, ‘Did McAuley make you gay?’”

From there, the readers burrowed deeper into the neighborhoods below Roosevelt. Dmitry Samarov read about his time working at Hardboiled Coffee Company in Beverly, a two-year-old coffee shop “with the only fresh roasted coffee beans for miles around.” People spontaneously called, “Gregg! Gregg!” when told Hardboiled’s owner, Gregg Wilson, was present.

Freelance journalist Adrienne Samuels Gibbs wrote a story for the event about her high school years hanging out at the Evergreen Plaza, befriending a “bad boy” who lent her his herringbone gold chain.

She ad-libbed to an audience that roared their appreciation, “That secret place on the second floor of the arcade that I can’t describe—everyone knows what I’m talking about, right?” They did: after the show, a man told her, “You brought up all the old memories.”

Perhaps WBEZ reporter Natalie Moore’s reading best underscored the importance of not conflating Chicago neighborhoods’ differing experiences but of weighing them against and with each other. Her piece on food inequity in Chicago, excerpted from her book-in-progress on segregation in the South Side, journalistically and autobiographically examined how “food access can be racist.”

Here the audience was silent, rapt when she covered subjects like the potential for South Side corner stores to supply suitable food instead of bringing in grocery stores like Whole Foods to Englewood. Moore’s personal anecdotes elicited the usual approving noise: she recounted a friend’s reacting to an expensive, lackluster meal at West Loop hot spot Green Street Smoked Meats by remarking, “It’s no Lem’s.”

Chuck Sudo, former editor-in-chief of Chicagoist, also satisfied the crowd with the attention he lavished on neighborhood

mainstays through the lens of his years biking the city. A Northwest Side native who never expected to end up in Bridgeport, he dropped a bevy of names, from Top Notch Beefburgers to Lem’s, that invited the raucous laughter of recognition. There is nothing better than hearing your local haunts treated with adoration, respect, and authenticity.

So it was somewhat jarring for Sudo to conclude, after asserting the joy of biking the lakefront is “to see the different Chicagos revealing themselves block by block,” that “we live in one neighborhood.

It’s called Chicago.” The words play upon the common understanding of Chicago as a city of neighborhoods, uniting a city that is sometimes too fractured, one that hasn’t achieved solidarity in dealing with both the problems and successes of different neighborhoods. How do you bring a disparate city together while maintaining its vibrant plurality? This is the question The Frunchroom asks, and which it will continue trying to answer at its next event in July.

Nevertheless, the one-neighborhood declaration was heartwarming; when Sudo left the stage, Smith said, “This is everything I wanted this to be.” Comments like “That was awesome” and “That was really cool” came both from audience members donning their jackets and those who remained in O’Rourke’s for the next half hour and beyond. Joining friends and mothers, the readers melted into the crowd—not so much performers as voices representing the audience.

“The Frunchroom’s special,” Gibbs said. She’d never met the other readers, but their readings were “on the same wavelength,” and not just in terms of overlapping mentions of Lem’s. “We had a nice South Side flow,” she said.

“I think the idea that the South Side is of one particular type or one particular spirit is just silly.”

—Scott Smith

APRIL 22, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

courtesy of john wheeler

Bluesy, but Bittersweet Billy Branch at the Promontory

BY MICHAL KRANZ

“A

re you all a bougie Hyde Park jazz crowd or are you a blues crowd?”

So shouted Billy Branch’s bass player Marvin Little into his microphone, urging the audience at the Promontory to shout back. Shout back they did, although half-heartedly, in affirmation of the storied tradition of grungy Chicago blues. As Billy Branch and the Sons of Blues took the stage on the night of April 11, a rowdy evening of blues began. However, with an audience whose average age was above fifty and who was mostly seated at reserved private tables, Branch’s extreme energy seemed like a precious relic of a bygone era.

Branch’s performance began with his band, the Sons of Blues, jamming without their front man for a few minutes in anticipation of the blues legend’s emergence onto

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 22, 2015

the stage. The hype seemed enormous— first each member of the band took turns soloing, with Little’s heavy, deep, bass lines resonating throughout the dimly lit auditorium. Little has taken the place of longtime Sons of Blues bassist Nick Charles, who passed away of cancer last year. After some funky slapping on the bassist’s part, Little introduced a friend of Billy Branch’s; he, in turn, introduced the bluesman himself, who danced onto the stage with harmonica in hand. Dressed in a gray blazer and a wide-brimmed hat, Branch dominated the stage from the moment he stepped onto it, reaching wild tones on his harmonica.

Billy Branch is one of the last remaining musicians of Chicago’s second generation of bluesmen, who came of age in the 1960s. Chicago blues itself was initially

created in the early twentieth century by legends such as Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters.

“I’ve been playing professionally for about forty years, and I picked up the harmonica as a child before I discovered the blues,” says Branch. In those forty years, Branch has dabbled in all sides of the music industry, from solo playing and recording to music education. His Blues in Schools program, which he has personally run since 1978, has taken him across the world from Belgium to Mexico, teaching kids and performing the blues in various schools.

Branch has not taught on the South Side of Chicago, but he has performed here numerous times Branch is a self-educated musician, and his fifty-plus years of experience with the

MUSIC

harmonica was on display at the Promontory show, where his instrument squealed, sang, honked, and growled in perfect harmony with his backing musicians. He says he was inspired to take up blues as an art form after witnessing the precursor to the Chicago Blues Festival in the summer of 1969 and hanging out in blues clubs throughout the early seventies, all while attending the University of Illinois at Chicago. It was there that he met his mentor,

Blues Shock, features creative approaches to playing the age-old blues and was rated highly by critics everywhere, even he acknowledges that Chicago blues’ best days are over.

“Things have changed drastically [since the seventies] because all of the greats are gone now; they’re all dead,” says Branch. “So we don’t have the richness of their music anymore. [The new guys] can’t be as good as they were, because those guys

In the musical landscape of the late seventies and early seventies, Branch “…simply absorbed what was there,” as he reminisces. “At that time there were still a multitude of very skilled blues musicians.” the blues legend Willie Dixon. “He taught me a lot, he told me about the importance of the blues and how important it was to American culture and African-American culture,” recounts Branch. “Ultimately he taught me to be a better musician.” Branch would go on to play with dozens of musicians in the scene and ultimately garner an Emmy Award and three Grammy nominations. Performing everywhere from the San Francisco Blues Festival to the Montreaux Blues Festival in Switzerland and North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, he has gathered a following around the world.

Branch’s musicianship includes not just blues, but also anything in his immediate social environment. In the musical landscape of the late sixties and early seventies, Branch “simply absorbed what was there,” he reminisces. “At that time there were still a multitude of very skilled blues musicians. I also appreciated the music that was non-blues, prior to that time, the whole rock scene, the British Invasion, what have you.” This was evident in his performance at the Promontory, where his band’s swinging blues groove was supplemented by a jazzy sax and trombone section as well as a chugging rock rhythm throughout.

But while Branch’s newest album,

were the originators. They invented the sound.”

This nostalgia for the golden age of blues was apparent in Branch’s performance that night at the Promontory, where Branch joked about his old age and personally invited all of his old friends from UIC in the audience onto the stage for one song. In a tender moment that also seemed to serve as a testament to the fading glory of the Chicago blues tradition, Branch performed an old song of his with his college friends from the seventies dancing behind him, but only a few joined their revelry in the audience below.

Following a cover of Muddy Waters’ classic “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man,” the band launched into the roaring title track from Blues Shock to finish the show.

The energy of the show lingered in the air for a few minutes, until the audience politely stood up and clapped for the band’s performance, with only a few hoots and hollers thrown in. Despite Billy Branch and the Sons of the Blues’ best efforts, the crowd’s vigor for Chicago blues had diminished compared to years past, and the show at the Promontory was largely a sentimental reminder of the glory of the blues age.

APRIL 22, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

Teachable Moments South Side teachers shared their classroom and community stories at Catalyst Chicago’s Classroom Story Slam

BY MARK HASSENFRATZ

Dakota Prosch has been teaching for fifteen years, most recently the fourth through sixth grade at Oglesby Elementary, a neighborhood Montessori school in Auburn Gresham. She told this story as a productive way to process what she called “the most recent and insane thing” in her career.

I

n all my years I had never seen such a dramatic swing in behavior as this past year.

I met Isaac the spring before fifth grade. He was a charismatic and energetic boy of nine. I was told he had been homeschooled and his mother was overjoyed to have found a public Montessori school on the South Side for her child. The overjoyed part was true. But actually, he had been school jumping for the past few years and just hadn’t landed anywhere for the past six months. Nevertheless, we didn’t have any real selection process or testing criteria and all were welcome. Montessori education begins at three, or ideally birth, with an emphasis on parent education as well, but I had no reservations about letting Isaac join our program since I assumed his educational experience had been child-led, hands-on, and he was independent and fluent in reading and research. But you know what they say when you assume.

That fall, Isaac walked in with his bright smile and was ready to greet the day. Before the next student could shake my hand, she was greeted with, “Dang, what you do to your hair?” We both stood, mouths agape. Speechless. I then realized I had no idea who this child was.

During the first month, our class got 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 22, 2015

accustomed to the peace rug protocols, “I” statements, breathing, doing yoga, holding meetings to solve problems. Isaac wasn’t getting on board. He got agitated when things wouldn’t go his way, insulted students, tried to stab someone at recess, brought a bullet to school. He had no sense of personal risk. His favorite target was a towering sixth grader or the 140-pound fifth-grade girl, named Crystal. I was like, “Of all the people, leave her alone.”

One day Crystal sat him down and said, “This is Montessori. We don’t fight.

We use our words to solve problems.” I was impressed and relieved. They would get him on track. But her advice was to no avail. As he rejected the class’s social mores, they rejected him equally as harshly. It was open season and he was the duck.

The class fell apart quickly once the fabric of our class culture was being unraveled and Isaac seemed to hold the yarn. But he had help. Students stopped waiting for their turn with the peace stick, wouldn’t complete their jobs, refused to use “I” statements. The peace rug collected dust. By winter break the Montessori method had become all but impossible to implement.

Without trust there was no independent work, without the expectation of safety, students could not concentrate. Once the

A

t Catalyst Chicago’s second Classroom Story Slam on April 2, teachers had the opportunity to share their experiences in Chicago’s schools (mainly CPS), focusing on equity (and the lack thereof ) in the classroom. In five minutes, each performer painted a picture of their unique experience in education, with a fifty-dollar prize on the line. South Siders Dakota Prosch and Ray Salazar were among the evening’s storytellers. The stories they told are reproduced below, although the names of students have been changed for their privacy. A special thanks to Catalyst Chicago for hosting the event.

entertainment became setting Isaac off like a firecracker, the lessons crumbled and burned like a black snake on the Fourth of July.

I tried to understand his behavior, read books on ADHD, ODD, personality disorder, anxiety, and finally settled on reactive attachment disorder, which is so serious that a teacher cannot expect to deal with it on her own. I felt hollowed out.

One day he bolted from the classroom yet again. It took three adults to track him down and take him to the office before he was SASSed. If you are in certain CPS buildings you know this means that someone from the mental institution is coming.

This was serious. They said his explosive outbursts were so uncontrollable that he was going to spend at least a week in outpatient care. They said, “Bring him tomorrow.” I went home breathing a sigh of relief.

The next morning, in he strolled, the smile from September a distant memory. He told me he wasn’t going anywhere. So it was for another…long…month. I convinced his mother to take him to a doctor.

His in- and out-of-school suspensions were beginning to mount. One day, after his eighth suspension, a doctor called to ask for my assessment of the charming boy he’d met. He had spoken to Isaac, who had said he was fine. He was getting all As. I stuttered. “We don’t give grades in Montessori.” We spoke at length about my frank and pained observations. I knew there was a little boy in there that was hurting and fighting like a caged animal. If only we

could unlock the cage and free him. The doctor sounded shocked.

A few days later his mother told me tersely that her son would be starting medication. The very next day, in walked a smiling, if a bit nervous, sweet boy I almost didn’t recognize. He came up to me and gave me a hug. “I am ready to work.” I felt like I was holding the hand of an accident victim learning to walk again. I talked him through his anxiety about learning, but this time he was able to keep it together. He persevered. He listened, he could breathe again.

He was no longer deserving of the reputation of pariah, but sometimes with kids, stigmas stick. I figured it would take time for the class to come around and see the new Isaac. But a curious thing happened.

The chaos the class had come to expect was no longer his fault. He was not the fall guy for every fight, not the cause of all the problems.

But they resented him for taking away their circus, their get-out-of-jail-free card.

And the more he stood up for what was right, the more they closed up ranks.

On one particularly bad day, Isaac called an impromptu class meeting. Everyone sat down and he announced that the class was being very disrespectful to Ms. Dakota. They were making it hard for me to teach and they all knew better. He thanked me for teaching him and always listening to him and helping to make his life better.

He said no one had ever done that for him before. Isaac had me speechless. Yet again.

EDUCATION

jamie hibdon

Ray Salazar has taught in Chicago for twenty years. He almost backed out of the storytelling event because he was nervous, but found himself following the same advice that he gives his students: take risks and step outside your comfort zone. He teaches English and Journalism at John Hancock High School on the Southwest Side and oversees the school newspaper. He also keeps a blog on education and Latino issues called “The White Rhino” (chicagonow.com/white-rhino).

I

thought I would live around 26th Street until I died. But when the gangs and gunshots got too close, I decided I had to leave.

A vile bunch lives on the Southwest Side. Latin Kings and Latin Queens, the Two Six—male and female—float around looking for a place to perch, destroy, then disappear. These guys and girls presume themselves on street corners when it gets dark, clutching bottles and passing cigarettes from hand to hand.

“Don’t you know the Lawndales only smoke blunts, muthafucka?” says a young punk to another puffing a cigar as I walk by the Little Village Academy playground.

Pride is in these punks’ posture, but fear is in their glance.

It’s 7pm. It’s getting dark. The sun sets and more gangbangers scurry out like rodents. Black hoodies keep their bodies warm, their faces hidden. With nothing else to do, they are inseparable. They shout and sometimes shoot to get attention. Their booming cars roll by, thumping and sparking silver from polished chrome. These row-

dy guys and girls wake the working class at night and make the sirens swirl and swirl like the chaos in their heads.

But my social consciousness should make me understand. Chicago, like most big cities, boasts inequality. Immigration isolates a population. Color traps someone.

Color sets another free. But I cannot justify the gangs.

In April 2002, just when the weather was starting to get nice, close to midnight on a Friday, a car crashed into a day-labor office on 27th and Lawndale. My wife and I were coming home when we turned the street and saw the fire with flames slapping the sky like giant flags. The crumpled Cadillac crackled as it roasted; the smoke dropped its scent on everyone who stared in fright.

Gangbangers surrounded it. The driver, a twenty-two-year-old Latin King, stood shoeless with bandages wrapped around his head. A woman walked up, grabbed his powerless arm, and pleaded in Spanish, “Cuídense, mijo” (“Take care of yourselves, son”). He almost nodded in response. His eyes moved left and right; he wanted to hold

someone’s hand.

The Cadillac’s front passenger lay shirtless on the sidewalk, his stomach rose and fell under the paramedic’s hands. In the streetlight, his face looked black with all the blood that spilled from his temple.

His mother, recently arrived from working second shift, screamed into the sky. In her wrinkled work shoes, she spun and yelled without control—her insides must have trembled. She made fists from her frustration, went to hit a car window, then stopped and seemed to think that it might break. In panicked movements, she moved closer to the driver with the bandage on his head. He barely moved to mumble, “I’m sorry, señora.”

The passenger’s father, in his dusty baseball cap and old mechanic’s pants, stared silently at his son bleeding on the cracked concrete. There was nothing he could do.

According to the neighbors, before the crash there were three gunshots, frightening as door slams, a couple blocks away. Then silence. Then two collisions. The old Caddy was rammed by a van, neighbors said. The driver lost control, then crashed into the building. Three of the passengers got out by themselves. The front-seat passenger was unconscious as the car began to burn.

“You have to get him out,” a neighbor shouted in Spanish at the guys. “He’ll burn!” The teens pulled out the sagging body through the window and laid him on the sidewalk. Nothing but the Caddy’s frame was left when the fire was extinguished.

According to the detectives, however, there was only one collision—the Cadillac with the building. “Usually when you get hit, crap falls off the bottom of your car or your lights break or somethin’,” the skeptical detective told a tiny crowd. “There’s no evidence of any impact on the street.”

The neighbors shouted, “No, there were…”

“We heard…”

“Pero eso fue…”

“Before we saw…”

Some of them said they called 911 when they heard the shots. To the detective, those weren’t facts. When he asked the driver what happened, the driver stared blankly and said he lost control. Gangbangers never tell the cops about their rivalries; it’s their own unspoken code.

Four months later, I left 26th Street after living there for twenty-nine years. That last day, I looked at the bundles of books and boxes waiting to be carried away like sleeping children. I threw away old curtains wrinkled as tissue and stared at the overload of memories in a garbage can belonging to the city. The gangbangers won, I thought.

I’m the one who has to leave.

But now I know I can still work to address the problems plaguing the Southwest Side even if I do not live in Little Village.

I don’t have to live in Little Village to contribute to it. I can’t pay rent there anymore or chase away the gangsters smoking weed.

But I can write about those blocks with broken sidewalks in a potent metaphor… or in a simile bolder than any gang graffiti.

If our city leaders invested as much money in our city’s children as they do in graffiti removal, campaigns, and tourism, low-income children could live forever more safely in their neighborhoods. And we could erase the image of an innocent child’s death from our minds.

Because…

When an innocent child dies, the father, if he’s there, does not cry.

His hands prepare to catch the mother if she collapses like a curtain.

Then he ambles to a spot.

Sits. Nods.

Implodes.

The mother shrieks.

She swoops to hug a heartbeat but barely finds her own.

Her hands reach into the sky to seize the clouds and shake her child’s soul from heaven.

APRIL 22, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

Five New Aldermen from the South Side O Profiling City Council’s Freshest Faces

BY ADIA ROBINSON AND ADAM THORP

S

ome of the five aldermen profiled here took money from Chicago Forward, an independent expenditure group that backed candidates friendly to the policies of Mayor Rahm Emanuel; others took money from the unions that backed his opponent. But for a referendum on mayoral leadership, keep your eyes on the top of the ballot—these candidates ran campaigns based on their own personalities and the particularities of their own wards. Get familiar with them and their stances; the longest-serving alderman on the Chicago City Council was elected nearly half a century ago, so Chicago could be dealing with these new aldermen for a very long time.

The results of a few especially tight South Side aldermanic elections are still unclear. As ballots from the 10th Ward were tabulated, Susan Garza’s lead over incumbent John Pope never exceeded a hundred votes. Garza most recently led by thirty-three votes and has declared victory; both Garza and Pope have filed for recounts (for more information about Garza, see “The Union Candidate for the Post-Industrial Ward,” published December 5 in the Weekly). Preliminary results from the 16th Ward indicate that Toni Foulkes, an incumbent shifting from the aggressively redistricted 15th Ward, earned 148 votes more votes than Stephanie Coleman. Coleman has refused to concede until the final results are announced, and may file for a recount. In the 21st Ward, Marvin McNeil has said he plans to file for a recount against the incumbent Howard Brookins Jr., whom preliminary results show leading by 286 votes. If Coleman, McNeil, or Garza wins, their names will be added to this list. Pope, Brookins, and Coleman were backed by Emanuel, while Garza, McNeil, and Foulkes have expressed different degrees of opposition to the mayor.

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 22, 2015

n its face, the race for City Council in the 17th Ward—which includes parts of Marquette Park, Auburn Gresham, Englewood, West Englewood, and West Chatham—should not have been an easy victory for David Moore, the Ward’s new alderman-elect.

Moore came in a distant second when he ran for the seat in 2011. Latasha Thomas, who beat him in that election, did not run in 2015, but the three-term incumbent and Democratic Committeewoman endorsed Glenda Franklin, his primary opponent in

David Moore - 17th -

Moore 52.93% / Franklin (i) 36.3% / Other 10.77% (General)

the race.

But Moore was not destined for perennial candidacy. On his second attempt, he handily won one of 2015’s most contentious aldermanic contests. He beat Franklin by more than fifteen percentage points and avoided a runoff against her and Reverend James Dukes, the other contender in the race.

Moore endorsed Jesus “Chuy” Garcia soon after winning his own campaign. Financial disclosures to the State Board of Elections indicate that he was supported by many of the unions that backed Garcia’s campaign, including the Chicago Teachers Union and the Service Employees International Union. Franklin received money from Chicago Forward, an independent expenditure group that backed aldermanic candidates who were aligned with the policies of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Moore worked as an accountant in the private sector and at the Chicago Department of Aviation and Chicago Housing Authority. His campaign website touts government experience, including leading development projects in the South Loop.

Moore is currently assistant to the Commissioner of the Cook County Board of Review. At an aldermanic forum in March, Moore said that his progression through street-level Chicago politics—from blockclub captain up—would make him a strong advocate for his constituents. “At the end of the day,” Moore said, “I know who to go to to get things done because I’ve done it already...you have to know how to navigate through City Hall.”

At that forum, Moore pushed against charter school expansion, saying that it denied parents a voice. Moore was one of several aldermanic candidates to host an event to discuss the role of TIFs (tax increment financing) in their ward. In his skeptical remarks before that program, Moore said, “When you hear TIFs, don’t think it’s a dirty word. Washington created it to be used in blighted communities. I’m sorry— downtown is not a blighted community.”

Moore was more broadly concerned that money used in TIFs might be redirected from schools. He suggested that a development plan for the 17th and neighboring wards might be funded by redirected TIF money.

N

atashia Holmes, the incumbent aldermen of the 7th Ward, had one question for her opponent and current alderman-elect Gregory Mitchell at an aldermanic forum this March: would he move into the 7th Ward once elected?

The short answer to that question is “yes”; Mitchell’s reply was to say that the question was “interesting.”

The question was interesting—because it was by no means clear who would win a battle of 7th Ward legitimacy between Mitchell and Holmes (the 7th Ward stretches south from South Shore through South Chicago, Calumet Heights, and South Deering). Throughout the campaign, that issue remained contested ground. Mitchell was redistricted into the 10th Ward—hence Holmes’s pointed question—but is moving back into the 7th. Mitchell was born and grew up in the

Ward, and moved back there after finishing college. Mitchell responded to questions about his residency by pointing out that Holmes is a relative newcomer, having

Gregory Mitchell - 7th -

Mitchell 21.1% / Holmes (i) 25.47% / Other 53.45% (General) Mitchell 56.56% / Holmes (i) 43.44% (Runoff)

lived in the Ward for a little more than a decade.

Holmes entered office after Sandi Jackson resigned, having been brought down with her husband, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., in a campaign finance scandal. A blue-ribbon commission, appointed by Emanuel, selected Holmes to replace her. “The Unlikeliest Alderman in Chicago,” as Chicago magazine dubbed her, received over $40,000 from Chicago Forward in her first aldermanic campaign.

She endorsed Emanuel in the 2015 race; Mitchell refused to do so.

Holmes led the field of seven candidates in February’s municipal election, but Mitchell beat her by ten percentage points in the runoff; Holmes won only a few precincts in South Shore, where she lives.

Mitchell’s background in finance and IT (he is IT manager for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange) may explain the quantitative focus of his policy prescriptions. Addressing the city’s pension crisis, Mitchell suggested that money in pension funds could be managed so as to attract fewer fees and that revenue might be freed up by paying incentives for corporate relocation over ten years instead of five. At an

POLITICS

aldermanic debate in March, Mitchell said he would encourage development with a “portfolio” of the ward’s strengths.

But Mitchell also claimed he would be a “neighborhood alderman,” more in touch than Holmes had been during her brief time in office. He claimed that Holmes’s constituent service had been inconsistent and that his IT background would help him do better. He strongly endorsed participatory budgeting, which Holmes was reluctant to do.

It came down to an appeal to community. Mitchell’s closing statement at the aldermanic forum reminded voters that he had lived in the 7th Ward through four changing decades. When he and Holmes attended a funeral for a shooting victim later that day, Mitchell said he would do so knowing that, some thirty years ago, that might have been him.

R

esidents of the 11th Ward elected Patrick Daley Thompson to represent them on Chicago’s City Council, giving him nearly sixty percent of the vote in his election against the youthful John Kozlar. Thompson, who has been involved in the community in numerous

Patrick Daley Thompson - 11th

Thompson 48.37% / Kozlar 35.4% / Other 16.23% (General) Thompson 58.03% / Kozlar 41.97% (Runoff)

ways since 2003, most recently served as the Commissioner for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. He will be replacing James

Balcer, appointed in 1997 by then-mayor Richard M. Daley (who is also Thompson’s uncle).

On his website, Thompson tells 11th Ward residents that, as alderman, “I will focus my efforts on a wide variety of projects and initiatives that will bring continued prosperity to the 11th Ward.” Promoting public safety is Thompson’s first concern. Through toughening “Lost and Found” gun penalties for people who fail to report lost or stolen guns to CPD, increasing CPD bike and foot patrols and encouraging more residents to get involved with Chicago’s Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS), Thompson hopes to make communities safer.

Thompson has also expressed plans to work with residents and local businesses to introduce comprehensive economic development initiatives. One of these is the Stockyards Museum Initiative, which would turn Stockyards National Bank, a Chicago landmark and reminder of the neighborhood’s industrial history, into a museum documenting Chicago’s rapid growth and transformation. This initiative would add jobs to the area, Thompson says.

Furthermore, Thompson aims to advocate for programs that provide support to teachers and make facilities safe and productive. Working with residents and the Chicago Park District, Thompson plans to expand parks and make them more accessible and dog-friendly. Lastly, Thompson promises to improve constituent services by taking a “customer service” approach, in which he’ll work to expand the Ward’s office hours, have a web-based log of service requests, and create six community advisory boards comprised of volunteers working together on issues that matter to all 11th Ward residents. Thompson also plans to host Saturday morning coffee at different locations in each neighborhood.

R

esidents elected Raymond Lopez to replace Toni Foulkes as the alderman of the 15th Ward. Shortly after his victory over Chuy-endorsed Rafael Yañez, Lopez thanked Ward residents, reminding them, “Together we’re moving the ward forward.” Lopez has been serving the 15th Ward as an elected official since 2012, when he was the first Mexican American to be elected Democratic Com-

mitteeman of the Ward.

As alderman, Lopez plans to continue the work he started in the community as Committeeman, when he introduced a neighborhood-wide watch program. The program has been largely successful since its introduction, as blocks with signs have seen an overall decrease in crime. He will also promote public safety by brightening up the streets at night, increasing presence at CAPS meetings, and pushing for more funding for local youth centers, as well as faith-based and nonprofit organizations that actively work to decrease violence.

Lopez also called for stricter gun laws and

dance by engaging local school councils. emocratic Committeeman Derrick Curtis beat out incumbent Lora Lane for alderman of the 18th Ward convincingly, winning by more than thirty percentage points; at the election party, Curtis’s supporters wore but-

D

Derrick Curtis - 19th -

Raymond Lopez - 15th -

Curtis 30.25% / Lane (i) 29.94 (i)% / Other 39.81% (General) Curtis 67.77% / Lane (i) 32.23% (Runoff)javier suarez

Lopez 47.65% / Yañez 22.13% / Other 30.22% (General) Lopez 57.98% / Yañez 42.02% (Runoff)

harsher sentencing.

To promote job growth the 15th Ward, Lopez also plans to “clean up” neighborhoods to attract businesses that will provide quality employment for Ward residents. Part of this involves reducing taxes on local businesses, directing TIF funds to neighborhood reinvestment and development, promoting competition, expanding community-focused hiring, and developing a 47th Street chamber of commerce.

Lopez will also attempt to increase funding for neighborhood schools and expand after-school programs. Additionally, he wants to partner with local businesses to provide real-world experience to high school students, and boost student atten-

tons emblazoned with “Lane Closed April 7.” Curtis promised to promote economic development and ensure that the neighborhoods of the 18th Ward are safe for children.

Curtis sums up his key issues with the acronym PEACE: public safety, education, accountability, city services, and economic development. As the sequence of the acronym indicates, his primary priority is promoting public safety. In an interview with ABC7, Curtis said, “I believe that if you want a strong, vibrant community, you must have safe neighborhoods, schools, parks, and business districts.” Through encouraging community policing and hiring more police officers to patrol neighborhoods, Curtis hopes to make the 18th Ward safer for all residents. He will also push for gun law reform. Much of Curtis’s experience lies in this particular realm of the public sector; he worked for thirteen years as a Chicago police officer and in Cook County juvenile detention facilities.

APRIL 22, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

QTIPOC to the Front The Black and Brown Punk Show Collective builds sound solidarity for queer, trans, and intersex punks of color

jean cochrane

BY BEA MALSKY

M

onika Estrella Negra and Donté Smith started the Black and Brown Punk Collective in 2009 as a coalition of activists and musicians dedicated to building a more inclusive scene for Chicago’s underground shows. The collective operates under a DIY (“do it yourself ”) organizing ethic, promoting solidarity between minority groups in a segregated city and carving out a space for queer, trans, and intersex people of color (QTIPOC) in a punk scene that is overwhelmingly white and male. Along with a near-annual summer festival, Black and Brown organizes a year-round series of workshops and fundraisers to benefit groups like Feed the People, a grassroots food bank based in Chatham, and The Anhelo Project, which awards college scholarships to undocumented students. The fifth Black and Brown Punk Show is set for the weekend of August 28. This year’s program will focus on the eradication of anti-black racism and hate crimes against black trans women, and it will benefit Sojourners Land, which organizes rural retreats for the QTIPOC community, and a New Orleans group with a similar project. Monika and Donté will also be presenting on DIY sustainability and how to make a mixtape in June at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit. The pair took an afternoon last week, Donté calling in from the middle of a New Orleans hailstorm, to talk to the Weekly about queer chosen families, punk gentrification, and salvaging the Chicago scene.

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 22, 2015

What was the need you saw in the Chicago punk scene when you started Black and Brown?

Donté Smith: It came from seeing black and brown kids who were at shows together and weren’t organizing events or making space for themselves. It’s all about representation, and seeing communities and groups of folks that aren’t connected. The Chicago punk scene definitely has some boys’ club dynamics, so I think it was wanting to address that and change it—to show folks that there can be an inclusive scene that isn’t oppressive or patriarchal.

Monika Estrella Negra: Even though there is a legacy of Latino punk, there’s still a lack of visibility for people who are othered.

That goes for black punks, Asian punks,

Southeast Asian punks—it transcends ethnic identity to include things like gender identity, sexual orientation, people who are differently abled.

How do you relate to Fed Up Fest, Chicago’s queercore festival?

MN: Fed Up Fest and Black and Brown have been doing cooperative fundraising, but one of the differences is that their participants are largely white queer and trans folks. A certain stigma that comes with being queer or being a person of color is that you can only be either/or, and it’s too complicated to jumble all these other identities into it. That’s always been a part of Black and Brown, saying, “We know you can be all of these things.” We’re reacting to a more homogenous queer scene.

PUNK

Can you tell me more about how Black and Brown functions as a collective?

DS: The collective thing comes from our background as anarchists. I’ve been involved in leftist social justice movements— anti-war, anti-militarism, queer and trans liberation, labor rights, food justice—for the past ten years. We’re working together because we’re friends and we support each other. It’s not like some old-school anarchist place where we all sit in a room together and vote and reach consensus every time.

How do friendship and kinship work into what you’re trying to do?

MN: Because we both come from a pretty strong QTIPOC community, chosen family is very important. That means we get into arguments, but we’re all committed to each other and to trying to work it out. That’s very important. There will be constant ups and downs, but there will always be a strong line of solidarity and reliance on each other.

DS: Being queer folks, gender-variant folks, and folks of color, we get to create our families; we’re not bound by biological families.

We get to choose what our relationships are to people, whether this person is my sibling or bestie or cousin or mama. We get to create that. It’s something we’ve had for such a long time, it’s part of our culture. You think about Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson [founders of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, which operated a home for queer homeless youth and sex workers in the 1970s]—STAR was a created family. It was also something born out of Stonewall [a series of demonstrations in 1969 in reaction to a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, commonly considered a turning point in the gay liberation movement]. These families have always been the way that we protect each other. It’s about creating our own intentional spaces, to protect ourselves against a world that wants to kill us.

This is obviously a political project as much as it is a musical one. Why punk?

Why the punk scene?

DS: Punk music is an institution now. They show that shit at the Met [referring to the 2013 “PUNK: Chaos to Couture” show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art]. Designers use the punk aesthetic for worldwide appeal. As with almost all institutions on this planet, there are dudes in power who are making money off of artists, promotions, events, shows, off of their connections and the venues that they control. That continues into the way the scene exists in Chicago.

MN: Aesthetically speaking, punk has been whitewashed in so many ways. The word “punk” itself has a different definition for whatever scene you’re rolling with in this city. Black and Brown is constantly trying to redefine punk as being about survivalism and DIY culture, which are imperative if you’re a marginalized person in this country. It’s the stuff my mom and my grandmothers did. It wasn’t punk in the idea of that subcultural identity, but everything they did was DIY. And that to me is punk.

I grew up in a pretty poor family, and my mom worked three jobs. She was a single mother, and we didn’t necessarily have all the things that we needed. But because of a community taking care of each other, friends would babysit us when she had to work. That’s a survival skill: being able to support somebody who you don’t even know but who is in the same collective.

Working with people in order to hold events, fundraising for something that will help something bigger—that’s always been Black and Brown’s impetus, even though we use the work “punk.” I love punk music, I hang out with other punks, but it’s always been about a way of life and not just my subcultural identity.

Is there a legacy of punk or underground

“That was the whole ideology of punk: taking the frustration that you feel, all the pressures on your back from being born into this world, and thrusting it back in someone’s face.”

—Monika Estrella Negra

in Chicago that you see yourselves as continuing?

MN: When I first came here, I started going to shows like ShyGirl Fest on the West Side. Martin [Sorrondeguy, vocalist for Los Crudos and Limp Wrist] was definitely influential to me in a lot of ways because of his identity as a queer man, but also as a brown man, growing up in Pilsen and having to go out and play punk shows with a lot of white kids who didn’t understand his identity.

DS: I was definitely inspired by the first bands I saw in Chicago, like Condenada, Bromance, and Sangre de Abajo—they’re all fronted by women and gender-variant folks of color, and the music is really political. That music inspired me to organize.

How does Chicago’s racial stratification affect the work Black and Brown is trying to do? How do you organize integrated shows in segregated communities?

MN: I believe that there needs to be sound solidarity between people of color in general. In Chicago there’s always been a major

rift between black and brown people, but we have a common sense of struggle that traces back to the transatlantic slave trade, colonization, and imperialism. The way this oppressive system works is to pit minorities against each other; the distances between neighborhoods can be so large that sometimes the only times these kids interact is when they come to our shows.

DS: We play around with formats; we’ve done lots of versions of the punk show.

We’ve done our shows in football arenas in Pilsen and youth arts centers in Uptown.

Those are very different vibes. I’d also say that gentrification is an issue for us. A lot of the spaces are owned by white punks now who are opening their doors to us.

From your perspective, what’s the relationship between punk and gentrification?

MN: The whole process. The mainstream punk aesthetic is no different than any sort of subcultural group that has always and strategically been used as a buffer. Once that scene is created, it becomes a hotspot for realtors.

APRIL 22, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

PUNK

DS: You move the punks in because the punks are okay with being crusty and being in a neighborhood with black and brown people, so they move in first and then create a certain scene that brings in hipsters. And then boom: you’ve got a Forever 21 and a Starbucks in five years.

MN: The fact is, if you’re a white punk living in these gentrifying neighborhoods, you need to be proactive in giving back privileges and resources. One of the downsides of gentrification is that property values start to go up, things get more expensive, businesses start closing down, people start losing their homes. If you’re going to live in these communities, make sure you’re giving back one hundred and ten percent.

DS: I think it’s also about knowing the history of where you are and how your actions affect the neighborhood. You should know that the hip coffee place is actually shitty to their employees or calling the cops on neighborhood kids. Being in an area that’s being gentrified is being in a war zone, right? It’s a matter of understanding what the actual social war is like in that neighborhood, respecting that, and actively taking a role against being an accomplice in that war.

What does it mean to be a white ally in creating an integrated punk scene?

MN: I think I’ve pretty much gotten tired of trying to tell white people what they should do to not be fucked up. Just be observant. Pay attention, be receptive toward our blatant frustration and anger, and don’t write it off.

DS: Allyship is a verb. It’s about doing something. You don’t get to rest on your laurels and say, “Oh, I have five black friends, so I no longer have any anti-blackness that I have to deal with.” It’s a constant state of being. What does it mean to be in solidar-

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 22, 2015

courtesy of black and brown punk show collective

ity with someone and willing to stand with them? It’s that constant work that starts with the folks around you. Pay attention to the way your friends are frustrated by the scene, or the way they get treated at shows.

Begin to ask why your friend’s band never gets booked. Are you paying attention to the dynamics of the scene? Which people are getting ostracized and mistreated?

Why do you think it’s worth reclaiming or repurposing punk, even after it’s been co-opted into a suburban white subculture?

MN: If you look at the history of rock and roll and punk, they came from a black style of music, and that’s the history of popular music in general. It was created by blacks, then re-recorded to play for a white audience. Some of the first punk bands to ever create the 1977 sound were all-black bands [referring to Detroit proto-punks Death and Pure Hell from Philadelphia]. That goes against the mainstream idea of what punk is, which is suburban kids rebelling against

their parents while still having these privileges attached to them. There can’t just be one idea of what punk is, and we’re trying to create something that punk should be used for in order to help us support each other.

DS: It’s self-expression, right? It’s great, putting something magical together on a budget with some rags and pieces. It’s the anger and the emotion of the music.

What’s the role of anger in your work?

MN: I went to Ferguson last year, and it was a very collective moment of anger that I felt was very representative of all we’ve been expressing. We take all the violence and anger that’s directed toward us, and redirect it back into the faces of the oppressors. That was the whole ideology of punk: taking the frustration that you feel, all the pressures on your back from being born into this world, and thrusting it back in someone’s face.

We’re saying, “We are black people. This is hundreds of years of transgenerational trauma and anger that has been building up.”

the black and brown chicago playlist

Picks from Monika Estrella Negra 1. La Armada – Negaciones 2. Bruised – Satisfying Texture 3. Boots – Amor de Lejos 4. Tensions – Snake Oil 5. Haki – Spliff 6. The Breathing Light – She Loved Everything 7. Ono – Albino 8. Crude Humor – Dancing Queen

FOOD

Packed Unpacks

W

hat’s the coolest thing you can put in a dumpling? Mike Sheerin has a few ideas.

“There’s a great strawberry dish that’s served with red grapes and fresh aloe in a rye wrapper,” he says. “Dessert will give us a lot of options to get creative.”

Together with business partner Aaron DiMaria, Sheerin—previously known for his work at Blackbird, Cicchetti, and Trencherman—is now helming an ambitious new project. The working title? Packed: Dumplings Reimagined. Slated to open this summer on 57th Street in the space formerly occupied by Edwardo’s Natural Pizza (1321 E. 57th St.), Packed promises a wide array of inventive, dumpling-based entrees—everything from French onion xiaolongbao to shishito hush puppies— and, unlike Edwardo’s, it all promises to be very, very good.

The idea is the product of a long backand-forth between DiMaria and Sheerin, whose business savvy mixed and marinated with their culinary creativity. Flavor profiles were dreamt up, reworked, discarded and dreamt up again until, at last, out of the great steam-cooker of imagination, Packed was born. But where to put it?

Though it’s hardly a food-lover’s paradise, for Sheerin, Hyde Park was an obvious choice. Raised in Chicago, Sheerin has fond memories of grabbing sandwiches from the Med and scarfing down cheeseburgers at Jimmy’s. Now Sheerin hopes to join A10 and Yusho as part of a new cadre of restaurants calling Hyde Park home.

“It’s an incredibly diverse and historic neighborhood,” Sheerin says. “But at the same time, it’s in the South Side of the city, and I think it’s been starving for some great neighborhood restaurants for a long time.”

Sheerin and DiMaria see a lot of potential for growth in the neighborhood, and hope to turn Packed into “something huge”—perhaps someday entering the pantheon of fast-casual gods alongside Chipotle and Shake Shack, with the 57th Street location as its flagship (“Twenty years from now, maybe,” Sheerin says, with measured excitement).

For now, though, Sheerin is confident that his unique take on dumplings will win big with the Hyde Park crowd. “I’m a fat kid, so of course a lot of the flavors I love are also reflective of stuff that you’d want to eat late at night or when you’re super hungry,” Sheerin says. Currently among the offerings: a pastrami dumpling with red-wine mustard and pickles and a bacon dumpling in a smoked paprika wrapper.

ian moore

“The combinations are really interesting and fun,” Sheerin continues, “and I think they’ll grab ahold of both your college kids as well as Hyde Park locals.”

The offerings at Packed will initially be Asian-inspired—steamed dumplings served in wicker baskets—but this is just the tip of the dumpling-berg. “I’d love to experiment with something like a potato pierogi, too,” Sheerin says. “The possibilities are sort of limitless.”

True to fast-casual form, Packed will feature limited seating, an ever-revolving

and eclectic menu, counter service, and delivery. The name of the game, Sheerin says, is accessibility, but without compromising on quality. “We want a place where someone can come in and get food really quickly that’s super delicious, but that’s also hormone and antibiotic free and locally sourced.”

For Sheerin, this means weekly trips to local farmer’s markets and working closely with industry insiders, as well as with providers themselves. “I’m constantly on the phone, talking to different farmers and suppliers, sourcing ingredients and talking to different chefs about where to get the good stuff,” he says.

Of course, with all the work that goes into finding this good stuff and packing it into delicious, digestible, and inventive dumplings, the final product couldn’t possibly be cheap, could it? Well, it’s complicated.

“Of course you never want to call your food ‘cheap,’” says Sheerin. “I like to use the word ‘approachable.’ We’re using higher-end ingredients, which we have to charge for, but at the same time we don’t want to alienate the market.” Entrees will probably start in the $7 range—not bad for good food in Hyde Park. “So I guess it’s ‘cheaply approachable,’” Sheerin concludes with a laugh. “How about that?”

Sheerin is aware that the concept of “dumplings reimagined” as the basis for a fast-casual restaurant is more than a little weird. He also recognizes that, as with the “reimagining” of any foodstuff, the fare at Packed will likely be a journey of discovery for the chefs as well as the diners. “You see it happening more and more in dining— as the public becomes more educated, and more familiar with the concept, that’ll allow us to get more and more creative behind the counter,” he says.

With this in mind, Sheerin and Packed plan to start out with more traditional, “tried and true” styles of dumpling-ry, and move out from there. Is a sausage-and-pineapple pizza dumpling in an Oreo wrapper with RC Cola dipping sauce finally on the horizon for Hyde Park diners? It may be too early to say.

Famed Chicago chef brings innovative dumplings to 57th Street

BY WILL DART

APRIL 22, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

BOOKS

Revolutionary Time David Roediger’s Seizing Freedom

BY SARAH CLAYPOOLE

I

n October 2014, two months after the fatal shooting of unarmed Michael Brown, dozens of protesters pushing for the prosecution of Brown’s killer, police officer Darren Wilson, gathered outside a St. Louis Cardinals game. The heavily white ticketholders waiting for admittance to the stadium worked to drown out the voice of protesters: what began as “Let’s go, Cardinals,” became “Let’s go, Darren,” a show of support for Wilson. After several minutes, a white woman yelled, “We’re the ones that gave all y’all the freedoms that you have!”

This statement—attributing progress in the fight for black equality in America to the generosity of white Americans—spoke profoundly to David Roediger, author of Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Liberty for All. He cited this protest and spontaneous counter-protest in conversation with In These Times editor Micah Uetricht at Hyde Park’s Seminary Co-op on April 4.

For him, the counter-protest is evidence of the stakes of historical narratives, which have social importance beyond the work of academics and the dry prose of textbooks, and profound implications on our understanding and formation of contemporary politics.

The social importance of historical narratives is a connective chain for his work as a labor historian across decades. He is best 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 22, 2015

known for The Wages of Whiteness, which studies working-class racism in the United States as the complex intersection of economic and psychological motives. It’s easy to see how work regarding the historical creation and maintenance of white racism can recast conversations about race in America today.

Seizing Freedom is an intervention into the most prevalent contemporary historical narrative regarding the Civil War, which relies on Lincoln-centric accounts of emancipation. Roediger’s text calls instead for a narrative of self-emancipation, and he presents his argument on two levels: as a traditional history (a look at the 1860s, the circumstances of slavery’s end, and emancipation’s effects on burgeoning white social movements in America) and as a critique and exploration of other historical accounts of the Civil War in the past quarter-century.

The crux of self-emancipation: when slaves fled plantations in the first few years of the Civil War, they tended to go to Union camps, making the question of slaves’ freedom quite real and quite urgent for the officers charged with deciding whether to return the slaves, keep them with the camp as property apprehended in war, or allow them to fight. In this way, slaves pressed public opinion about emancipation as a possibility

and struck into the very function of the plantation system before the federal government stepped in. That government’s intervention was fundamentally an admittance of the political reality that slavery was dead; it wasn’t the savvy leadership of Lincoln standing up for human rights.

Slaves emancipated themselves inside of what historians of the French Revolution call “revolutionary time”—“a period in which the pace of change and the possibility of freedom accelerated the very experience of time.” For Roediger, this radical happening, the most important occurrence in American history, served as an inspiration to other movements, notably women’s suffrage, the white labor movement, and disability studies. Though these movements did not accomplish their lofty goals, or at least not as quickly as some thought they might at the time (the women’s suffrage amendment didn’t happen until 1919), their failings—falling outs, loss of momentum, and more—are fruitful teaching moments for people interested in change today.

Roediger’s writing and speaking are strongest when highlighting the stakes of self-emancipation and the agency of the slaves in their own freedom and afterward.

He does not use the term “Reconstruction” for the years following the Civil War—in-

stead, he calls this time “Jubilee,” a concept from Leviticus which Roediger describes as “emancipation…a cyclical time of liberation, of abolition, and of mechanisms of redress that specifically included land redistribution.” To Roediger, Jubilee is preferable to Reconstruction for a few reasons: it’s the name freed slaves would have used, but it is also a way of linking their present situation to a literary moment for a people long denied literacy, and it makes emancipation seem foretold at a time when the majority of white Americans were shocked by the possibility. Most importantly, however, it includes notions of reparations for former slaves and their families that are still at play in modern discourse. “Jubilee” also emphasizes “slaves as modern historical actors,” granting them agency in their own fates and circumstances.

Roediger makes his account compelling through an expansive cast of characters— thinkers, activists, and radicals—reinforcing what we lose by ignoring self-emancipation.

Perhaps the most remarkable are the black leaders ignored in contemporary retellings, all of whom are entirely cut out of Steven Spielberg’s 2010 film Lincoln, just one example of Lincoln-centric accounts of emancipation now prominent. These characters include Civil War-era movers and shakers like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner

MUSIC

Truth, as well as later historians committed to self-emancipation, primarily W.E.B. Du Bois, whose work from the early twentieth century dances across Roediger’s discussion of the construction of black American history, racism, and emancipation.

To some extent, Seizing Freedom is arguing that contemporary Civil War historians should listen to W.E.B. Du Bois.

The text opens its great tragedy in chapter four, “Falling Apart: The First Rainbow Coalition and the Waning of Revolutionary Time,” with Du Bois writing in 1935 that the “aftermath of Reconstruction” (Roediger’s words) was “a tragedy that beggared the Greek” (Du Bois’). The revolutionary potential so diffuse in the wake of self-emancipation played out poorly for all involved political movements—along lines of race, gender, and class—and for Roediger and Du Bois both, that is the great tragedy of telling the story of this era.

The most important weakness of the text is, surprisingly, the lack of historical detail fleshing out the argument around

like these movements, entails oppression undone, followed by an overhaul of the hierarchies and values of society. These radical movements pulled from self-emancipation both “its powerful ‘moral impetus’ and its practical example.” More than that, the key theorists of emancipation—Douglass, Wendell Phillip, William Lloyd Garrison—were still alive and theorizing after the war, opening up possibilities for coalitions and collaborations across activist causes. The extent of revolution dreamt of in those heady days did not occur—but in Roediger’s telling, it is beautiful and significant that it was even dreamt of in the first place.

Roediger’s broad-based historical knowledge and force of conviction are no less striking in person. Though the traditional historian’s urge to incessantly quote and cite sometimes proved discursively exhausting, it exhibits a deep interest in radical history (this interest corresponds with the company who published Seizing Freedom, Verso Books, which Harper’s calls “Anglo-America’s preeminent radical press”) and processes

The extent of revolution dreamt of in those heady days did not occur—but in Roediger’s telling, it is beautiful and significant that it was even dreamt of in the first place. self-emancipation. Seizing Freedom is much more interested in its consequences than its substance. The section of the book that deals with slaves as historical actors taking what Frederick Douglass called their “general strike” lasts seven pages, entitled “What Slaves Decided,” and is squished between a more robust discussion of Lincoln and Douglass exchanging ideology in the early 1860s, and the priorities of slaves after freedom. In the introduction, Roediger explains that the self-emancipation narrative was most common during parts of the twentieth century, but very little of that work is retooled here.

This weakness, however, is easy to move past. The force of Roediger’s passion and erudition are the driving force of the ambitious text. By the strength of these virtues, white able-bodied masculinity, sharecropping, women’s suffrage, and late nineteenth century labor protests become inextricably linked with Jubilee. At its most hopeful, Jubilee,

of change.

At the Co-op, Roediger described the impetus to write this book as the events in Tunisia at the start of the Arab Spring, another instance of “revolutionary time” whose consequences continue to unfold. In cases like this, close attention to radical processes—both historical and contemporary—become rich ground for activists and scholars alike.

When, toward the end of the conversation, Roediger brings up the words of the white woman at the Cardinals game in St. Louis, it is with an understanding of the full irony. For Roediger, not only did slaves fundamentally emancipate themselves, starting off a century and a half of American racial progress through brave black actors, but this self-emancipation sparked much of women’s suffrage as well, thereby creating many of the freedoms a white woman in America enjoys today.

A Contemporary Harmony The Beverly Morgan Park Community Choir performs its annual concert with flair

BY AMELIA DMOWSKA

A

lthough the members of the Beverly Morgan Park Community Choir (BMPCC) were all dressed in black at their annual concert, the atmosphere was anything but solemn. A drummer nodded his head to the rhythm of his cymbals, a cellist’s hair swung over her eyes as she swayed along to the back-and-forth motion of her bow, and singers—whether belting out resounding operatic notes or spunky jazz harmonies—smiled brightly and bobbed up and down to the music.

Representing a wide range of ages, denominations, instruments, and twenty-two different churches, these singers and musicians congregate annually as the BMPCC—one of the largest and most eclectic choirs in Chicago—to put together a show far more unconventional and extravagant than the traditional choir concert.

This year’s show, at St. Barnabas Church on April 12, featured a piece called “A Contemporary Mass,” a work that merges Latin text with contemporary world music and jazz undertones. BMPCC’s director, Lance Loiselle, stumbled upon the piece and couldn’t stop listening to the unique melodic interplay of instruments and voices. Loiselle reached out to Dr. Stuart Scott, the piece’s composer, with the intent of purchasing the music, but the two started corresponding and ended up meeting in their shared hometown of Detroit.

In the end, Scott agreed to travel to Chicago to conduct the piece for this year’s BMPCC concert, marking only the third time the piece had been performed in its entirety. Although rarely performed, “A Contemporary Mass” is slowly making its way through choirs around the world—the piece will next be sung by the Scroll of Music at the Baptist College of Rio de Janeiro.

“Dr. Scott brought a lot of energy and expertise to his piece,” says Janelle Richmond, a soprano and five-year member of the choir. “We were lucky to have him here.”

The other pieces performed by the choir ranged from Beethoven to “Soon and Very Soon,” a jazz tribute to Andraé Crouch. In order to prepare such an array of music for each year’s concert, the choir starts rehearsing in January for two hours every Sunday afternoon. After ten weeks of focused rehearsal, the group performs for friends, relatives, and community members in Beverly’s St. Barnabas Church, where they have been performing since 2000.

BMPCC has been steadily expanding and attracting more voices and instruments. With a strong, harmonized sound that remains unified even amidst complex rhythms, it’s difficult to believe that the choir is made up solely of amateur singers.

“We are open to everyone who wants to share their voice,” says Richmond. “The choir reflects the diversity of the Beverly Morgan Park community. The different backgrounds and strengths everyone brings enrich the choral tradition.”

By bringing together individuals from all over Chicago and directors from across the country, the cohesive sound of the BMPCC concert is a tribute to innovation and collaboration. The choir’s policy of openness to new music and new members keeps its musical tradition moving forward, allowing it to grow with each year and each performance. This adaptability, willingness to branch out from traditional classical music, and experimentation with different types of praise music make BMPCC’s performance of unconventional pieces like “A Contemporary Mass” a true success—a new type of contemporary harmony.

APRIL 22, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

BULLETIN Bayard Rustin: Celebrating His Time on Two Crosses As a gay black man working during the civil rights movement, activist Bayard Rustin faced discrimination on multiple fronts. Despite attacks from within and without the civil rights community after an arrest for homosexual activity, Rustin made major contributions to Dr. Martin Luther King’s nonviolent movement, most notably as chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Later, he worked as a labor advocate, promoting the integration of American labor unions and serving as chair of the Socialist Party of America; toward the end of his life he became a public spokesman for gay and lesbian rights.

University Church and the Bayard Rustin Society honor his life and legacy with a daylong celebration featuring his partner, Walter Naegle, as well as several community organizations. University Church Chicago, 5655 S. University Ave. Saturday, April 25, 8:30am-4:30pm. (773) 363-8142. universitychurchchicago.org (Andrew Yang)

Ride the Waves: Exploring our Natural Connections Ride the Waves is an unhurried group bike ride through Bronzeville, Chinatown, and surrounding communities intended to bring bicycling to all parts of the city.

This ride is not the time to show off your speed or your Spandex, but is instead a meditative, languid turn through parts of the city unaccustomed to seeing many bikers. Part of a series of weekly rides organized by Slow Roll Chicago, whose mission includes making the whole city safe for biking, this week’s ride explores the near South Side.

More well-behaved bicyclists on the streets in all parts of Chicago will make our city friendlier, slower, and safer for all. While the pace of the ride is comparable to the leisurely rolling of molasses out of a jar on a warm spring day, your bike ought to be in good working order. Don’t forget to pack a smile, and be ready to make new friends.

Ain’t She Sweet Cafe, 526 E. 43rd St. Wednesday, April 29.

Meet 6pm, ride 6:30pm. Free. (708) 831-3570. slowrollchicago.org (Lara Kattan)

Hands Up, Don’t Test! The Struggle for Black Education Jesse Hagopian, teacher and author of More Than a Score, will be speaking about the intersection of high-stakes testing in public schools, race, and class in Chicago. The event has been co-organized by the Chicago Teachers Union, which has been vocal about its opposition to increased testing in Chicago Public Schools, most recently by challenging the Illinois State Board of Education over the introduction of the new Common Core-aligned test PARCC. The subtitle of the event is “Standardization, the Struggle for Black Education, and the Criminalization of Black Teachers and Youth.” Don’t wear your I’m With Rahm buttons to this event. SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana, 2229 S. Halsted St. Friday, April 24, 5pm. Free.

(Lara Kattan)

Zerlina Maxwell: “From Catcalling to Sexual Assault” PSA: no one—and I mean no one—likes to be catcalled. In honor of April being National Sexual Assault Awareness month, political activist Zerlina Maxwell will be reminding attendees of this fundamental axiom at the Knapp Center.

The UofC’s Office of Multicultural Student Affairs and the Campus Dialogue Fund presents Maxwell’s event, “From Catcalling to Sexual Assault: How We Can All Work to End Gender-Based Violence” this Wednesday evening. If the prospect of fighting against chauvinists with a nationally recognized, triple-threat activist (Maxwell works on domestic violence, sexual assault and gender inequality) isn’t enticing enough, check out Maxwell’s brilliant interview on FOX News, in which she schools Sean Hannity on rape culture. Light refreshments will be served. Knapp Center, Room 1103, 900 E. 57th St. Wednesday, April 22. 6pm-7pm.

Free. Registration encouraged on eventbrite.com (Alex Harrell)

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 22, 2015

Youth/Police Conference Examining the role of police on Chicago’s South Side, the Invisible Institute’s Youth and Police Project seeks to shed light on black teenagers’ experiences with police officers. According to the Youth and Police Project, though the public scrutinizes police forces for obvious abuses of power, a persistent trend of less overt police misconduct and disrespect creates an atmosphere of mistrust between police and community. By studying how everyday interactions with police influence the behavior of teenagers on the South Side, organizers of the Youth/ Police Conference hope to expand the conversation about youth and police interactions with six panels over two days featuring scholars, students, and police officers. University of Chicago Law School, 1111 E. 60th St. Friday, April 24, 2pm-5:30pm. Saturday, April 25, 9am-3:45pm. law.uchicago.edu (Peter Gao)

who has somehow endeared himself to national acclaim.

His first album, Summer in Pain, consists of nine songs played on an electronic organ and recorded on his iPhone four years ago, and dashes out melodies with enigmatic sincerity. The “Meltdown” will also feature Rollin Hunt, Gel Set, and The Pen Test, whose recent LP Interstate is pulsing and dreamlike and plays off of the feel of a road trip. Come early so you can be there when the coffee shop closes and kick out all the nerds. Hallowed Grounds, 5706 S. University Ave. Friday, April 24, 7pm-11pm. Free. Will also stream live on WHPK radio. (773)702-8289. whpk.org (John Gamino)

STAGE AND SCREEN Susan Giles: Scenic Overlook

is intense: vivid colors and bold strokes bring otherwise ordinary images to a point of spirited, acute, and confused meditation. Documenting the two Chicago neighborhoods the artist has lived in, Bridgeport and Beverly, Samarov’s show will include pictures of interiors, still-lifes and cityscapes whose strength, according to the painter, comes as a welcome respite from the flashing screens and “bloops and bleeps” of digital life. Samarov, born in Moscow in 1970, immigrated to the US in 1978, attended the Parsons School of Design, Art Institute of Chicago, and Indiana University, and has worked as a cab driver since 1993. In 2011, he published Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab, a book combining dreamy watercolors, gritty drawings, and wild tales from his time as a cabbie. The event is hosted by Rational Park, a Chicago event space, gallery, and creative studio. Rational Park, 2557 W North Ave. Friday, April 17-Friday, May 1, hours by appointment. rational-park.com (Clyde Schwab)

Seeing Hearing Screening

Decades before Kurt Cobain was even a twinkle in his mother’s eye, The Sonics were busy creating the signature hard-edged sound of the Pacific Northwest. Hailed as pioneers of punk, the music of the Tacoma, WA natives sounds as raw and edgy today as it did in the mid-sixties.

True to their status as godfathers of punk rock, their hard-rocking 1964 single “The Witch” was denied radio play because of its satanic subject material. The growling vocals and wailing saxophone of the original band are reunited at last and promise to put on an unforgettable rock ’n’ roll show. Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Friday, April 24, 9:30pm. $25. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago. com (Lewis Page)

In Susan Giles’ new exhibition, “Scenic Overlook,” one can view some of the world’s tallest buildings from above. Giles’ installation consists of large wooden sculptures modeled after the four highest observation towers in the world, the Tokyo Skytree, Canton Tower, CN Tower, and Ostankino Tower, all held up horizontally by steel structures. Giles takes advantage of the two-floor gallery space to allow observers to view these famous architectural wonders from above. Giles, a professor in art at DePaul University, get her MFA from Northwestern in 2009 and is known for her large-scale installations in venues across Chicago including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Elmhurst Art Museum. Visit the Hyde Park Art Center to witness Giles’s exploration of the power of perspective, tourism, and architecture. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S Cornell Avenue. Sunday, April 19 - Sunday, July 26. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm.

Free. (773) 324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Clyde Schwab)

Simon Amstell at Thalia Hall

Loo Presents: We

Nervous British comedian Simon Amstell is taking his To Be Free tour to Thalia Hall in Pilsen on April 22 for his Chicago debut. Amstell is best known in his native United Kingdom as the host of several talk shows, including “Never Mind the Buzzcocks.” He left talk shows to create “Grandma’s House,” a BBC comedy that ran two seasons and was a main outlet for Amstell to express his feelings for Ben Whishaw, an actor he had a crush on. Amstell’s comedy generally focuses on his neuroses, crushes, and things that make him nervous. Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Wednesday, April 22, 8pm. $26. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com (Sam Stecklow)

Martha Clippinger’s art is loud, colorful, and, often literally, off the wall. Her work hangs in the space between painting and sculpture, exploring the effects of color, as well as shape, in three dimensions. Fittingly, the piece that is being used as a promotional image for her new exhibit, “Loo Presents: We” at Slow gallery, is bright orange and yellow, countered by a serene blue wave pattern, the corners of the paper curling away from the wall and projecting into the space beyond it. “Loo Presents: We” is a group exhibition featuring Clippinger’s work alongside pieces from video and performance artist, painter, and musician Guy Richards Smit and Chicago based fibers artist Allison Wade. In the words of the gallery, “It’s not a competition, but they’re all number one.” Slow, 2153 W 21st St. Saturday, April 25-Saturday, May 16.

Saturday, noon-5pm. Free. (773) 645-8803. paul-is-slow. info (Robert Sorrell)

Old Wicked Songs

Project 1915

org (Clyde Schwab)

MUSIC The Sonics at Thalia Hall

Adam WarRock, Cochise Soulstar, Mega Ran at Reggies Rock Club In what promises to be one of this week’s geekiest nights in music, Kingbone Press hosts nerd rappers Adam WarRock, Cochise Soulstar, and Mega Ran as performers at the Indie Comix Expo at Reggies Rock Club. WarRock, whose body of work includes the Game of Thrones rap “When The Winter Comes” and a critically acclaimed “Parks & Rec” EP, opens with a set of “overly enthusiastic” hip-hop. Chicago’s own Cochise Soulstar, “Lord of Time and Savior of Babies,” follows with a guided tour of the cosmos—evil aliens beware. Former middle school teacher and nerdcore pioneer Mega Ran closes out the night with a style inspired by 8-bit video game sounds.

With over $50,000 in Kickstarter funding and a co-sign from Capcom, the self-described “TeacherRapperHero” is a rising presence in the underground rap scene. Numerous Chicago comic book artists will also be in attendance.

Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State St. Friday, April 24, 6pm doors. $8. (312) 949-0120. reggieslive.com (Andrew Yang)

Moniker Meltdown at Hallowed Grounds Café Get hyped off of WHPK and coffee (or whatever you plan on putting in your coffee cup) in this live showcase of Moniker Records artists at Hallowed Grounds café in Hyde Park. Headlining the show will be Jimmy Whispers, whom Moniker calls a “dirty weirdo from Chicago” but

In 2012 artist Jackie Kazarian executed an intensely painful, personal exhibition in a hospital. Entitled “Breast Wallpaper,” her work drew on her own experiences with breast cancer, publicizing a personal trauma and offering an empathetic hand to others dealing with the disease. This year she is working to address another kind of trauma: the 1915 Armenian Genocide in which one-and-a-half million Armenians were massacred. one hundred years after the genocide, Kazarian, who has Armenian heritage, has created a massive mural to commemorate the event and to explore the intersections of memory and trauma, again in a deeply personal way. The comparisons to Picasso’s “Guernica” are apt, but the artist is taking on this difficult subject in her own style. The piece will premiere in Chicago at MANA before touring nationally and internationally. Mana Contemporary, 2233 S Throop St. Open through Friday, May 29. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. Free. (312) 850-8301 manacontemporarychicago.com (Robert Sorrell)

Dmitry Samarov: Between Beverly & Bridgeport Life through the lens of Russian artist Dmitry Samarov

The LODGE calls itself a project space “in service of the dark arts.” However, instead of showing you how to create horrifying chimeric animals or enhance the bone-chilling quality of your evil laugh, LODGE presents a series of film screenings, performances, and public exhibitions in a windowless banquet hall. If you’re into strange performance art, you should consider heading down to see Seeing Hearing Screening, a project that matches four filmmakers with four artists in order to develop pieces examining a lofty theme: “intimacy and memory in institutional spaces.” On April 25th, the venue will present a screening of “Inside” by Edward Thomasson, which focuses on privacy, and a performance of “Even the Ear is an Eye” by Courtney Mackadanz & Alex Stein, which promises great mystery with its theme of “ladders, walls, and limits.” Bring your friends and family, but please do not bring incense, corpses, or goats. LODGE, 1850 S Blue Island. Saturday, April 25, 7pm. Free. darklodge. org (Morgan Pantuck)

First produced in 1996 by Jon Marans, Old Wicked Songs is the story of an aging Viennese music professor and his prodigal but burnt out piano student. In a story that takes teacher and student to emotional extremes while discussing the ramifications of the Holocaust in Austria, Old Wicked Songs shines as a valuable lesson that reflects the importance of healing, music, and remembering one’s past. The play closely follows the “Dichterliebe” (A Poet’s Love), a collection of songs by Robert Schumann. The play is presented by Provision Theater, a Chicago company that broke into the scene in 2004 with an acclaimed production of Cotton Patch Gospel. Provision has since followed with productions including Smoke on the Mountain, the Boys Next Door, and Gospel. Provision Theater Company, 1001 W. Roosevelt Rd. April 29-June 7. Fridays, 8pm; Saturdays, 8pm; Sundays, 3pm. $10-$32. (312)455-0066. provisiontheater.

Comedian Patti Vasquez “Lipstick Mom” Patti Vasquez will be performing stand-up comedy at the Beverly Arts Center on April 24.

I know what you’re thinking—who’s watching the kids?

Fortunately, Mrs. Vasquez promises that she leaves the car window open while she performs, so her children will definitely get enough air. Granted, Patti tends to stick to more conventional stand-up material—tackling hard topics like relationships, pop-culture, and motherhood—but her lengthy professional resume suggests that audiences have not yet tired of hearing about her son’s love of trains or weighing her breasts on the scales at Whole Foods (“yes, they’re organic”). This show represents the latest in a series of comedic projects, including four solo shows and multiple television appearances. Plus, part of the proceeds will be donated to the Beverly Breast Cancer Walk, so you’ll get to laugh, support the arts, and back an important project. Score! Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. April 24, 8pm. $25. (773)445-3838. beverlyartcenter.org (Morgan Pantuck)

CALENDAR Story Club South Side One stage. One story. Eight minutes. Go. From New York Times authors to theater majors, narrators grab the mic and spill their guts out to a hungry audience at the live literature performance club, Story Club South Side. Founded in Bridgeport, Story Club has expanded to Minneapolis and Boston after its success in Chicago.

Open mic and featured performers will be exploring the theme of epistles during this month’s performance at the Co-Prosperity Sphere. BYOB. Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan St. Tuesday, April 21, doors 7:30pm. $10 suggested donation. (773)655-6769. coprosperity.org (Alex Harrell)

Auden Poetry Reading The Seminary Co-op continues its celebration of National Poetry Month with an evening dedicated to the life of Anglo-American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet W.H. Auden, whose terse, energetic style gave voice to the urgency and moral anxiety of the early twentieth century. The show will feature seven of Auden’s poems set to music by Aron Dunlap, a professor of liberal arts at Chicago’s quirky Shimer College, who has a Bachelor of Arts in Music with a specialization in violin performance. He also participates as one half of the husband-and-wife musical duo Good Dust. Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Friday, April 24, 6pm-8pm. Free. (773)752-4381. semcoop. org (Andrew Yang)

VISUAL ARTS Imaginary Landscapes Returning to a space of your past is the best way to wipe away the rose-colored nostalgia tint from your glasses.

Through Imaginary Landscapes, Mana Contemporary presents an exploration of the relationship between space, time, and memory. Four Midwest-based artists delve into the uncertain space at the nexus of the three, and the result is a collection of sculptures and images gathered by Chicago-based curator Allison Glenn. Lisa Alvarado’s work features elements of shamanism as she critiques cultural appropriation and assimilation; Assaf Evron toes the line between photography and sculpture; deconstructing the mundane, Robert Burnier explores failed utopia; and, last but not least, Caroline Kent harnesses narrative and storytelling to ruminate on what it means to be an outsider in another country. Delve into the uncertainty that spans space and time. Mana Contemporary, 2233 S. Throop St., 4th floor. April 4-May

31. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. Opening reception April 4, 6pm-9pm. (312)850-0555. Free. manacontemporarychicago. com (Kristin Lin)

Nature’s Matrix Like many of their fellow artists, Charles Heppner and Diane Jaderberg have turned to nature for inspiration.

Instead of capturing the astonishing might of an ocean, or the tranquility of a peaceful sylvan landscape, they channel elements from nature and turn them into visual motifs, repeating and abstracting them to create pieces which are not just strange but nearly unrecognizable. Also important for their work and their new installation is the interaction between technology and nature, which is mirrored in Heppner’s use of digital media and computer software to create prints. Their joint exhibition, “Nature’s Matrix,” is taking place at the Hyde Park Art Center, where the two have been studying and creating since the mid-2000s.

Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. April 5-July 5.

Opening reception Sunday, April 19, 3pm-5pm. (773)3245520. hydeparkart.org (Robert Sorrell)

Joe Hill 100 Years Part 4 Since his 1915 execution before a firing squad in Utah, Swedish-American labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill has become emblematic of the struggle of itinerant workers in the United States. To mark the hundred-year anniversary of Joe Hill’s death, the URI-EICHEN Gallery in Pilsen will be showcasing the politically charged works of a dynamic duo of social activist artists: the late Colombian cartoonist Jorge Franklin Cardenas and the New York-based painter James Wechsler. Cardenas’ work, which includes caricatures of Che Guevara, John Lewis, and Francisco Franco, will be displayed for the first time in over forty years, after being released to the public by his Hyde Park-based daughter-in-law. Weschler will showcase his “Freedom of Information” series of paintings, inspired by the FBI’s Cold War era files on artists and writers.

URI-EICHEN Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted Ave. Opening reception April 10, 6pm-10pm. By appointment through May 1. Free. (312)852 7717. uri-eichen.com (Lauren Gurley)

figure and portrait to evoke the visual sound of hip-hop; Roger Carter bridges the gap between graffiti and abstract expression; Walter Bailey is a pioneer of aCRYLONIC aRT, a technique of graphic design on acrylic polymer panels; Rodney Wade draws upon his experiences growing up on the South Side; and Just Flo is, among numerous roles, a tattoo artist and a mural painter. Explore the ways in which these artists probe broad questions of experience and identity. Gallery Guichard, 436 E. 47th St. Opening reception April 24, 6pm-10pm. Free. RSVP required at galleryguichardsocial@gmail.com. (773)791-7003 or (708)7729315. galleryguichard.com (Darren Wan)

Go Away, Ghost Ship!

Ranging across wallpaper, found wood, house paint, photographs, fabric, steel, and plaster, there’s a type of media to please almost anyone in this group show by four 2015 UofC MFA students. This thesis exhibition represents the blood, sweat, and tears the students have put into their work over their two-year program. Alex Calhoun, Sara Rouse, Zachary Harvey, and Autumn Elizabeth Clark have been working together since arriving at the UofC, and the show’s name is a cheeky reference to the cartoon mystery they all watched as children, Scooby-Doo. Sometimes making art is a matter of solving the mystery—exploring form, material, and content in order to create a final object. Let’s hope they have Scooby Snacks. Logan Center, 915 E. 60th St., Gallery 107. Through May 14, Tuesday-Saturday, 9am-8 pm, Sunday, 11am-8pm. (773)702-2787. arts.uchicago.edu (Lara Kattan)

Confessions

tasked with writing down a confession, something that they’ve never told anyone before. Visitors will be given a copy of each artist’s written confession on arrival and the show will involve visual interpretations of the written confessions in any manner the artist chooses. The one-night-only show will allow the audience the novel experience of comparing the written word with its visible elucidation. Where art is the translation of some ineffable thought or feeling into something perceptible, this show will allow the audience an even greater insight into the artist’s process of turning ideas into visuals. Chicago Art Department West. 1932 S. Halsted St., #101. Friday, April 24, 7-11pm with after-party to follow. (312)7254223. Free. chicagoartdepartment.org (Lara Kattan)

Snuff The word “snuff ” conjures up different things for different people, whether it be a video of murder, the 1976 splatter film, or for those of us still into the nineteenth century, fine-ground tobacco. But next weekend, Slow is taking on the heavy topic in an art show featuring Tony Balko, Todd Chilton, Jeffery Grauel, and Diego Leclery.

Slow, an independent exhibition venue, features contemporary art that is “introspective and vulnerable (read slightly nerdy),” demands exploration, and is brutally frank and witty. From Balko’s flashing-color nostalgia to Chilton’s vibrant pattern painting, from Grauel’s seemingly barren work to the over-my-head work of Leclery, if you want a take on snuff, some excellent art, or a chance at free booze, visit Slow next weekend. Slow, 2153 W. 21st St. Opening reception Friday, April 25, 6pm-9pm.

Through May 16, Saturdays 12-5pm. Free. (773)645-8803. paul-is-slow.info (Clyde Schwab)

Interpretation is the name of the game in this mixed-media group show. Seventeen commissioned artists were

LURE Gallery Guichard’s next exhibit, LURE, is encapsulated by its acrostic tag line: Love, Urban, Rawness, and Energy. Featuring six Midwest-based African-American artists, LURE draws upon a wealth of experience and artistic talent. James “Drew” Richardson renders the disparate experiences of young individuals; Derrock Burnett uses

APRIL 22, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19