SSW 04.06.16

CTU DAY OF ACTION, LANGUAGE BARRIERS, PROM DRESSES, & MORE INSIDE

Art by Ginny Taulé

With support from: DePaul University Global Initiatives, Intercultural Programs Center, Center for Latino Research, Latin American Studies, Nuestra América, Modern Languages, Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 6, 2016

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

Editor-in-Chief Jake Bittle Managing Editors Maha Ahmed, Christian Belanger Deputy Editor Olivia Stovicek Senior Editor Emeline Posner Education Editor Music Editor Stage & Screen Editor Visual Arts Editor

Hafsa Razi Austin Brown Julia Aizuss Corinne Butta

Contributing Editors Eleonora Edreva, Andrew Koski,

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

Gozie Nwachukwu, Kezie Nwachukwu, Bilal Othman

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

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

Cover photo by Sara Cohen

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 Cop with a Mop The Sun-Times called Dean Angelo, president of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a few weeks ago. The paper asked Angelo whether Jason Van Dyke, the police officer charged with murder in the shooting of seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald, was employed by the FOP. After the call, Angelo got an idea. A wonderful idea. An awful idea. Angelo got a wonderful, awful idea! Taking the Sun-Times query as inspiration, he decided to hire Van Dyke as jack-of-all trades custodian for the union. “He might be on the roof, he might be in the office,” Angelo said. “He does anything we need[!]” As to those who might find Van Dyke’s employment with the FOP distasteful despite his purported ubiquity and industriousness about the FOP headquarters, Angelo assures us that there is a precedent. Angelo cites, for example, Serena Daniels, an officer who was stripped of her police powers after shooting an unarmed passenger in a car and was also subsequently hired by the FOP. “We’ve probably had one hundred people in no-pay status who we got jobs or hired at the hall. This is nothing new,” Angelo said to the Sun-Times in a recent phone call. “Also, thanks for giving me the idea with your last call!” he probably did not say, but could have.

Spring? Nope.

The saying goes, “April showers bring May flowers,” but what does it mean for spring when the first showers of the month are snow showers? For a second there, it almost seemed like winter had freed Chicago from its icy clutches: flowers emerged from the ground, birds were singing, and temperatures climbed to just above seventy degrees last weekend. But as any seasoned Chicagoan knows, weather in this city is only consistent in its inconsistency. According to the National Weather Service, temperatures on Sunday ranged from twenty-six to seventy-one degrees (a forty-six-degree

range!). This was not just the thirteenth largest one-day temperature range on record for Chicago since 1871, but also the largest one-day temperature range in April since April 20, 1936. According to a guest weatherman on Fox 32, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) from the Marvel Avengers series, this weird weather was caused by Thor rather than by an especially strong El Niño year.

Lathrop Returns In more serious news, it looks like the city has found its newest slush fund.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has recently, discreetly moved to create a new tax increment financing (TIF) district for the Julia C. Lathrop Homes, a 925unit complex that was one of the first public housing developments in the country, and for a long time one of the more successful in the CHA, before its decline in the 1990s. The CHA stopped filling apartments in 2000, saying at the time that the property would be rehabilitated, but in 2006 announced a plan to redevelop Lathrop as a mixed-income development with roughly 400 public housing units out of 1200 total. The near North Side complex sits right on the riverfront, which means that plans involve a kayak dock (naturally). But it also means that when the property is in the developers’ hands and ceases to be tax-exempt, it will likely generate tens of millions in property taxes over the next twenty years. If it becomes a TIF district, the property tax money received by schools, parks, and other taxing bodies will be frozen for up to twenty-four years, with all the rest of those millions channeled into a TIF fund. The mayor controls how the money is spent—and though he could spend all the money on the Lathrop development, he probably won’t. So not only will the development project reduce public housing stock by over 500 units while thousands are waiting for a spot, but as a TIF district, it will likely divert tax money away from neighborhood schools to Rahm’s pet projects. Cha-ching.

IN THIS ISSUE ctu unites with activists, workers for brought to light

'day of action'

“I think this does change the way that people think about racial segregation. ” sara cohen...4

“We’re in front of the children, we know what they need.” jake bittle...8

language barriers

prom meets pageantry

“We obviously need to do more. ” kristin lin...6

Photography and fashion shed light on the importance of prom on the South Side. emiliano burr di mauro...10 S

ctu day of action STORIFY AT BIT.LY/1URYLI7

1989 the number reading

Soon everyone is on a first-name basis with the poets. martin awano...12 hiding in plain sight

They are available for viewing if you know where to look. karen ford...13

ON OUR WEBSITE que te hierve la sangre

Amara Betty Martin captures life in neighborhoods throughout the world. cj fraley

South Side Weekly Radio soundcloud.com/south-side-weekly-radio APRIL 6, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Brought to Light The Bronzeville Historical Society works to preserve funeral records of black Chicagoans

BY SARA COHEN

I

n a compact building on the site of the Stephen A. Douglas Tomb near 35th Street and South Lake Park Avenue, the Bronzeville Historical Society stands defiantly.

“Myself, family, and friends always gathered for different events and socializing and thought it important that we begin the Historical Society. None of us are educators or scholars in the sense that we attended schools to learn about black life in Chicago, but we all had a passion for our own families’ personal histories, and the Bronzeville Historical Society emerged out of that shared interest,” said Sherry Williams, the founder and president of the community organization, which is dedicated to preserving

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 6, 2016

the history of black Chicago.

Since its inception, the Bronzeville Historical Society has been the source of dozens of projects, exhibits, and events created from collected stories and artifacts. Among the most recent of these is its acquisition of death records from the Charles S. Jackson Funeral Home. The family-owned business near 74th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, which primarily served African-American Chicagoans from 1867 until its closure in 2013, held historical documentation from some of the most important eras and individuals in black history.

“Imagine, because of the Jackson Funeral Home being the oldest and longest Afri-

can-American funeral business in the city, how important access to those records would be for descendants, genealogists, scholars, certainly educators, and the general public,” said Williams.

Recognizing that significance, Shirley Latham, the funeral home’s now eighty-nineyear-old president, asked Williams and others to preserve the records before its closure. Members of the Afro-American Genealogical and Historical Society of Chicago (AAGHSC), headed by Lettie Sabbs and Nettie Nesbary, began compiling the death records into a surname index. The team—which included AAGHSC members Laurann Bibbs, Doris Morton, and

ARCHIVES portunities, they also reveal the continued discrimination that blacks faced upon migrating to Chicago, incapable of escaping segregation even in death.

“There are some burials at very few Catholic cemeteries, there are some burial records that indicate shipment back to place of birth.

But largely Burr Oak and Lincoln Cemeteries were historically used for African-American burials in Chicago,” said Williams. “So just as they were segregated in the South, they were segregated here in Chicago.”

And due to the negligence of cemetery employees, many of the burial locations were lost or withheld from relatives of the deceased.

As a result of her own difficulty locating family members’ graves, as well as requests from other community members, Williams took steps to recover the lost information. She reached out to Karen Benjamin, an urban historian and pro-

ple think about racial segregation, and I hope that this next generation starts to challenge what the older generation believes and their assumptions about who people are, how to treat people, how a city should look like and be organized, and who benefits,” said Benjamin.

At the Bronzeville Historical Society, community members and student volunteers are proceeding to sort through the remaining boxes of Jackson Funeral Home files, which were acquired from the state this fall and span from approximately 1920 to 2011. With the help and support of these dedicated individuals, as well as the women of the AAGHSC, Williams hopes to eventually acquire a comprehensive archive accessible to the public both in print at the Historical Society and in digitized form.

“How neat would it be to compile this information and at least bring another resource for those who want to gather, protect, and of

“How neat would it be to compile this information and at least bring another resource for those who want to gather, protect, and of course honor the memories of their ancestors?”

—Sherry Williams, Bronzeville Historical Society

SARA COHEN

Sylvia Rogers—has spent over three years processing binders of records and organizing them according to name, birthdate, birthplace, names of next of kin, burial place, and other details.

Their initial index documented 120,000 burials from 1923 to 1990. However, after the funeral home closed, a significant number of its documents from before, during, and after that period went into the care of the state, as is protocol, and were missing from the collection as a result.

In response to that need, Williams set out to recover the information, citing the broad cultural significance of the artifacts when appealing to the state.

“Probably close to a year and a half passed before we received a letter from representatives from the State of Illinois granting us the access to those records, so we went to Springfield with a U-Haul van and we brought them back to Chicago in two trips,” she said.

As a result of those trips, the Bronzeville Historical Society received an expansive collec-

tion of Chicago history in the summer of 2015: approximately 400 boxes of more original documents from the Jackson Funeral Home. Many of these records came from the years between 1920 and 1923, chronicling the lives of World War I veterans and individuals who moved to Chicago as a part of the Great Migration.

“When we look at obituaries and death records over the course of those years,” Williams explained, “many of them have a box for when the migrant came, or how long they had been a resident of Chicago, and then of course for their place of birth. You see Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, many southern states that largely represent those migrants, and we get a timeline on when that huge push came into Chicago of migrants leaving the Jim Crow South and leaving the cotton fields and sharecropping.”

Though many of the records document the lives of individuals fleeing persecution and racism in pursuit of freedom and increased op-

fessor at St. Xavier University, with whom she had collaborated in the past. With the help and enthusiasm of students from one of Benjamin’s classes, what originally began as an assignment to document 200 burials blossomed into the recording and digitizing of over 1,300 burials, with the results made completely accessible to the public.

“It was a pretty big project to try and document all of the different gravesites there, and so we thought that would be a perfect thing to ask for the help of the students,” said Benjamin.

The fifty-six students in Benjamin’s class located the burial sites of individuals from the Jackson Funeral Home records, then photographed the graves to later upload to the BillionGraves website, which enables anyone to find a grave using GPS data.

According to Benjamin, many of the students emerged from the project with personal incentives to continue processing records to locate graves and upload data. One student, a veteran himself, was alarmed at the level of disrespect and unkemptness of many veterans’ graves. In addition to documenting the graves online, he began using the death records to contact next of kin in order to secure veteran markers for the graves.

“I think this does change the way that peo-

course honor the memories of their ancestors?” said Williams.

Benjamin added, “The more people who are aware about the Bronzeville Historical Society and what Sherry and a few others are trying to do in preserving that precious history— how important it is, and what a tremendous loss it would be, not just to those individuals directly impacted but to the entire city and future generations for understanding who we are, where we come from, and what our collective history is—the better.”

It is perhaps also empowering that this stream of work continues to pour out of a small building that sits on the tomb of Douglas, one of Chicago’s most well known politicians, a powerful senator whose family owned slaves and who argued that territories should be able to vote on whether to allow slavery. Little by little, through the committed efforts of the Bronzeville Historical Society and its many associates, the memory, dignity, and historical understanding of black Chicagoans continues to grow. As Shirley Latham noted in a preface to the original surname index, it is through the tenacity of these individuals and their endeavors that the old business motto of Jackson Funeral Home—“Dedicated to Dignity”—lives on. APRIL 6, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

Language Barriers

With a growing number of new Chinese immigrants attending Kelly High School, teachers and administrators must find ways to adapt

BY KRISTIN LIN

A

t Thomas Kelly High School in Brighton Park, cell phones are allowed in class—sometimes. A classroom rules poster in room 357, where Pui Lam Law teaches a Chinese bilingual art class, specifies that students can use their phones as translation devices.

“Kelly has a long history of catering to the needs of new immigrant students,” said Dongyu Bao, a Chinese language instructor at Kelly.

In the past, this meant accommodating Spanish speakers. With a fifth of the student body enrolled in bilingual classes and eightyone percent of the student body reporting as Hispanic, Kelly High School is well accustomed to working with a significant Spanish-speaking school community. Ten teachers have been hired for the school’s Spanish bilingual services, but Kelly principal James Coughlin said that in total, over fifty faculty and staff members speak Spanish, ranging from teachers and teacher aides to administrators and security guards.

But the school has begun to also provide resources for Chinese-speaking students, whose families are part of a larger demographic shift of Chinese immigrants into the area.

These families have begun to occupy neighborhoods west of Chinatown, in McKinley Park and Brighton Park, according to Coughlin. Ten years ago, Asian students made up 7.9 percent of Kelly’s student population. Today, that number has jumped to 13.8 percent.

Theresa Mah, the State Representative for the 2nd Congressional District who also sits on Kelly’s local school council, played a role in pushing the school to better accommodate Chinese families, Coughlin said. With six Chinese-speaking staff members, Coughlin says that Kelly is now recognized as the high school with the most resources for the Chinese community on the South Side: in fact, students often come from outside of Kelly’s service area for the school’s bilingual services.

Even so, Kelly is short of enough teachers to properly serve Chinese students. The small staff of six cannot possibly accommodate all the needs of all of Kelly's Chinese English lan6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 6, 2016

“If we have someone that they feel like they can connect to, they can talk to, they can trust, it will really encourage them to come into school.”

—Vicki Law, Kelly High School JEAN COCHRANE

guage learners. Some students find their bilingual and ESL classes poorly paced because of the wide range of language skill levels teachers have to work to accommodate.

Melody Eng is a senior at Kelly who has conducted research on her peers’ experiences with the Chinese resources and classes provided at school. Over the past two years, she has observed many of her classmates feeling disengaged with the material.

“They seem to not have a lot of motivation to go to these [bilingual] programs because they find it not challenging,” Eng said.

“Our biggest difficulty is that we cannot find qualified people to teach [Chinese students] in their language,” Coughlin said. Ideally, the school would have at least three more bilingual-certified teachers to teach science, math, and social studies.

The shortage of Chinese-speaking staff members can cause students to feel isolated, according to Kelly’s “community connector” Vicki Law, who helps with attendance issues and is the only Chinese-speaking administrator at Kelly. Since many new immigrant parents work long hours, Law says the staff shortage is critical to address. “The kids will see us even more than their parents,” she says. “If we have someone that they feel like they can connect to, they can talk to, they can trust, it will really encourage them to come into school.”

Outside of the classroom, much of the responsibility communicating with Chinese-speaking students and family members is funneled to Vicki Law. When I visit her desk in Kelly’s main office, she is talking to a family of Cantonese speakers. Law is clearly in high demand: a piece of paper pinned above the

desk informs students that they cannot visit Law during the school day. (When I ask her about the sign, she muses that students will find any way to skip class).

In addition to managing community relations and talking to Chinese-speaking parents, Law also translates school documents and interprets workshops about college-readiness, which instruct parents and students how to navigate critical steps like ACT registration and financial aid applications. Any task that requires Mandarin interpretation—from helping counselors work with Mandarin-speaking students to communicating with Chinese students about attendance issues—falls on her desk. “[Law] is hired as a parent coordinator, but the school is trying to pull her out to be a translator or interpreter,” said Pui Lam Law,

EDUCATION

the bilingual art teacher who teaches many Chinese students. “But sometimes it's very hard because she is the only person the school can go to in the office. So basically everything goes to her involving any of the Chinese parents or language or the students.”

“It's kind of like everybody wants to pull out a piece of you,” Law laughs.

The grant that funds Law’s position ends at the close of the school year, and with budget cuts limiting the school’s capacity to hire fulltime staff, Law said she is unsure of what is to come.

Despite the uncertainty, teachers are finding ways to reach out to Chinese immigrant students. When Dongyu Bao started teaching Chinese at Kelly last year, he noticed a need and an opportunity for more extracurricular activities to accommodate the Chinese-speaking contingent at Kelly. He started a badminton club, which he said attracted over thirty students, the majority of whom were Chinese.

Bao noted that the school’s programs are changing and expanding to accommodate the needs of Chinese students. “We obviously need to do more. [But] we lack support.” ¬

APRIL 6, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

CTU Unites with Activists, Workers for ‘Day of Action’ Thousands attend downtown rally to protest cuts and unfair funding

BY JAKE BITTLE PHOTOGRAPHS BY LUKE WHITE

O

n April 1, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) collaborated with numerous other education, labor, and activist organizations to carry out a citywide “Day of Action.” The CTU authorized the one-day strike in response to what CTU President Karen Lewis called “unacceptable labor conditions.”

The day of action began with picket lines at numerous CPS schools; at Ray Elementary in Hyde Park, CTU picketers were joined by members of the University of Chicago’s Graduate Students United, as well as by supportive undergraduates and faculty from the UofC. “I think it’s so exciting that UofC people are out here to show support for public education,” said Gabriel Sheridan, a second-grade teacher at Ray who has been at the school for eighteen years. “That’s so powerful. There was a united movement back in the day that gained momentum, and it fizzled out, but now people have regrouped.”

“We’re fighting for fair funding above all,” said Chandra Garcia, who teaches third grade at Ray. “All kids should be able to receive the same resources.

It’s that simple.” Garcia noted that Ray has “almost ninety-nine percent” union participation.

Pickets continued across the city throughout the morning before giving way to a series of protests, speak-outs, and teach-ins that addressed much more than just working conditions for teachers. The various actions on the South Side alone protested mass incarceration, low wages for fast food workers, tax-increment financing (TIF) allocation, cuts to higher education, the lack of a state budget, and

layoffs at the Marquette Park Nabisco plant. The picket that began at Benito Juarez High School in Pilsen ended with a two-mile march to the Cook County Jail, where there was later a protest against the school-to-prison pipeline led by Enlace Chicago. The Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) led its own “Day of Action” events at Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Bronzeville.

BYP100 led a two-hour teach-in at Chicago State University that was followed by a rally protesting the imminent closure of the school.

The day of action culminated in a rally at the Thompson Center, attended by thousands, with speeches by representatives from BYP 100, Assata's Daughters, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), McDonald’s workers, and students at CPS, as well as Karen Lewis and Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. Signs at the rally declared that CPS had gone “broke on purpose” and urged Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Governor Bruce Rauner, and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool not to disinvest in Chicago’s schools.

“I’m trying to send a message by being here: that I shouldn’t have to fight for what is mine,” said Bethany Pickens, a teacher in attendance at the rally.

Pickens teaches at Kenwood Academy. “I’m a product of CPS, and a second-generation music education teacher at CPS. I can tell you, we need the opportunity to do our job to the fullest....We’re in front of the children, we know what they need.”

When the rally concluded, protestors marched east on Wacker Drive, before heading down Michigan Avenue, then onto Lake Shore Drive. The march continued into the evening. ¬

This page: Thousands of protestors joined an hour-long march that traveled down Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. Facing page, top left: Employees in Loop offices looked on from above as the rally grew in size. Middle left: A union member at AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) carried a sign showing his union’s solidarity with the CTU. Middle right: Community organizer Veronica Morris-Moore, co-founder of Fearless Leading by the Youth and a leader behind the campaign for a trauma center at the University of Chicago, was one of the first speakers at the Thompson Center rally. Bottom left: Union marshals escorted CTU President Karen Lewis away from the rally stage after her speech. Bottom right: A man in a Rahm Emanuel mask said he wore the mask to protest the mayor’s 2013 school closings; other protestors marched to demand more investment in neighborhood public schools.

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 6, 2016

EDUCATION

APRIL 6, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

Prom Meets Pageantry A new exhibit at the Arts Incubator brings the ‘Runway to Reality’

BY EMILIANO BURR DI MAURO

A

s a cultural institution, prom has been a part of the American tradition in one form or another for the better part of the last century. In small towns and big cities alike, young men and women attend their prom as a marker of the accomplishment of having finished high school and fulfillment of the tradition so often represented in television and media. In the last few decades, however, prom has become far more than a school dance; the current exhibit at the Arts Incubator in Washington Park, Runway to Reality, explores the pageantry and extravagance of prom on the South Side through the sociological photography of Helen Maurene Cooper and the fashion designs of Suzette Opara.

As a self-proclaimed “amateur social scientist,” most of Cooper’s previous work—which includes exploring drag queen culture and nail art within the system of salon ownership in Chicago—has focused in one way or another on what she calls the “performance of femininity.” Opara, on the other hand, hasn’t always been the “prom lady,” as she refers to herself, but started as a fashion designer in 2004 and immediately was consumed by creating and studying everything she could. “Fashion was an escape, it was fun, and exciting, and sexy, and it was all these things, so I always kept up with it,” Opara said when I spoke to her over the phone last week. “It’s a way to speak without even speaking.”

The collaboration between the two seems like a perfect fit: Opara, whose one-of-a-kind, custom-made gowns are in high demand every prom season, has given Cooper exclusive access to the hours-long process young women and their families undergo before heading off to their prom. Cooper’s own interest in the subject was first sparked when she chaperoned a prom in Philadelphia at the high school where her mom teaches, she said. “I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, where custom gowns and suits were virtually unheard of when it came to prom. Boys rented their tuxes and girls purchased gowns at specialty or department stores. But within the city, Hispanics and African-American teens going to prom wore and commissioned custom garments,” Cooper said.

This experience led her to wonder if the same type of spectacle existed in Chicago and in what parts or demographics.

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 6, 2016

After a chance encounter with the owner of a textile outlet in Pilsen, she was pointed in the direction of Opara, who has been making prom gowns for about twenty-five or thirty young women every year. Opara, in turn, directed Cooper towards her clients, who opened their homes for Cooper to photograph the pre-prom events. Beginning from when her subjects, a majority of whom are from African-American communities across the South Side, start to get ready, to when they enter a car to go off to the main event, Cooper captures every moment in between. What she found was more than pomp and circumstance, but rather entire neighborhood affairs.

Just as Cooper’s work began to find a sustained focus on the South Side, she and Opara began looking for space to jointly exhibit their work. When the Arts Incubator had a call for exhibition submissions, it seemed like the perfect venue, not only for its proximity

to the greater South Side, but also in terms of the intended thematic discourse behind their work. “[The show] gives people of other cultures a look into something they wouldn’t normally see, especially a different image of African Americans, because with media you’re constantly bombarded with negative images of young African Americans,” Opara said.

Yet, at the heart of the exhibit, of course, is the element of fashion: it is what first caught Cooper’s attention, and the designs are the most striking visuals in the show. As the eye travels around the room, it constantly catches on the vibrant, sequined, and elegantly embroidered pieces physically in the gallery, as well those worn in the pictures. At the opening in late March, a professional model wearing one of Opara’s designs even stood on a pedestal in the center of the room.

While the young men wear brightly colored vests and bowties to match their dates, the

photographs are mostly centered on the young women—as is the phenomenon of prom. This distinction resulted in a wide range of photographs depicting the young women, and mostly stoic, striking portraits of the young men. “In the process of photographing the young women,” Cooper said. “I observe them, and I don’t have them interact too much with the camera.

But with the young men, I directed them a great deal. They are usually standing to the side, waiting for the pictures or directions from their date.”

Cooper’s photographs act as freeze-frames of moments of intense excitement; many depict large crowds with phones and cameras held in the air taking pictures of the prom couple.

Cooper herself becomes as much a part of that crowd with her camera as she is separated from it as a third-party observer. “I believe [prom] was adopted as a marker for coming of age. For families it’s a symbol of pride, you have to finish

VISUAL ARTS

COURTESY OF THE ARTS INCUBATOR

“I feel like it’s a part of a rite of passage. Jewish families have bar mitzvahs, Mexican families have quinceañeras... It's something for coming of age, a celebration of transitioning to the next level.”

—Suzette Opara, fashion designer high school to go to the prom, and it signifies an accomplishment—it’s a big deal—the whole block comes out, both families come out, some families have T-shirts made, there are make-up artists, balloons, and just so many little details,”

Cooper said.

Other photographs depict more private moments of reflection or spirituality: one photo shows a young woman exiting a bedroom alone, presumably having just finished getting

dressed, while another depicts a family in a prayer circle before the departure to prom. “I feel like it’s a part of a rite of passage. Jewish families have Bar Mitzvahs, Mexican families have quinceañeras,” Opara says. “It's something for coming of age, a celebration of transitioning to the next level—adulthood, college, whatever it is.”

While prom remains the connecting factor between Opara and Cooper’s work and the thematic focus of the exhibition, neither the dresses nor the photographs would exist without the event itself. They exist as mere documentation, even relics, of the actual event, which transcends the work and remains as separated from the viewer as from Cooper and Opara, neither of whom ever attend the prom. They amplify our consideration of what it means for a whole community to gather around this singular event.

“There are so many different types of fam-

ilies and communities and support, and when hundreds of people come out every year to see someone off to their prom, that’s really what it’s about,” Opara says.

With thousands of students graduating high school and attending prom in Chicago every year, there is no foreseeable shortage of subjects for Cooper’s photography, and certainly no decrease in the number of commissions that Opara is likely to receive for her one-ofa-kind pieces. The two plan to continue their partnership, as well as their individual work.

Opara is already having multiple fittings a day for dresses, while Cooper has plans to photograph the upcoming season. With new families, new dresses, and new events to be experienced, it is of great importance that Opara and Cooper are willing to share with the public such an intimate window into prom and the beauty and celebration that comes along with it. APRIL 6, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

LIT

Poetry in Conversation

Kevin Coval and Nate Marshall talk poetry, memory, and 1989

BY MARTIN AWANO

“B

efore we start, I just want to say thank you to Chicago for kicking out Donald Trump,” says Kevin Coval, setting the tone for the night. Standing next to Coval, Nate Marshall chuckles while three rows of fans erupt into laughter. Under the gaze of a Mohammed Ali portrait, Marshall and Coval grasp their poems and lean forward, poised to perform their free digital chapbook and audiobook, 1989, The Number.

The live release on March 11 at The Silver Room in Hyde Park was an exploration of Marshall’s and Coval’s experiences with the politics and culture of 1989.

1989, The Number is one of many Marshall–Coval collaborative projects, and is billed as part of the BreakBeat Poets Series—a sort of sequel to their acclaimed anthology, The BreakBeat Poets. Marshall and Coval also participate in hosting the Louder Than a Bomb poetry competition, run by the organization Coval directs, Young Chicago Authors; the reading was among the events surrounding this year’s LTAB festival.

For a casual hour, Marshall and Coval begin the event by offering thanks and fielding light conversation with each member of the audience. Marshall shakes hands with friends who have shown up while Coval introduces himself to everyone he doesn’t already know; soon, everyone is on a first-name basis with the poets.

When a fair crowd has settled, Marshall and Coval explain that this performance is the result of six days collaborating at the end of 2015, a piece meant to consider the year 1989 and its relevance today. The two make allusions to the fact that 2016 is set to be a politically charged year—see Coval’s joke about Trump—but they draw few explicit connections between 2016 and the past. Instead, Marshall and Coval launch into a medley of personal anecdotes, poetry, and commentary on the audience’s reactions to their thoughts on the year 1989.

Light jokes and emotional poetry are presented as one and the same, bound together by intermittent stories about the authors’ lives.

Marshall: “When I was born, my head was so large.”

Coval: “How large was it?”

Marshall: “It was so large that they 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 6, 2016

x-rayed it.”

When Coval reflects on a childhood bully who used to spit on his Adidas Superstars, the audience’s sympathetic pause quickly turns to laughter.

“I told Joey Jabalon to fight me after school,” said Coval, “but when we got there he showed up with his crew, so I punched him once and ran to my dad’s car to escape.”

Coval turns the conversation to hip house, a music genre combining hip-hop and house, which he nostalgically remembers emerging in 1989. Marshall chimes in, recalling an excessively explicit rapper, Too $hort, whom he and his mother listened to together and who turns up in the chapbook in a poem called, “My Mom’s Favorite Rapper Was Too $hort.”

Eventually, the conversation spirals out into the audience, as people begin shouting out their favorite Spike Lee movies.

However, despite the jovial commotion, the audience is absolutely silent for the readings. Each piece, whether performed as a duet or single, packs the words of both poets in a mixture of their characteristic styles. The critical tone and subject matter of Marshall’s recent, much-praised work Wild Hundreds is clearly felt when Coval passionately delivers stories about the South Side.

Some titles are outright belligerent: “Motherfuck Gentrification. Or As I Understand It This Is A Free Country A Man Can Live Where He Wants.” They encapsulate the experiences of both white and black families enduring changes in Chicago. Coval explores a conflicted identity, a white boy exploring black culture, as he recalls being “an anomaly, and aberration.” Other titles are subtler in their criticism: “Machine” addresses greater political unrest in Chicago, commenting on both the racism of the political system and past police abuse.

Both poets write and perform individual pieces titled “The Year I Got Live,” possibly to ground their performance in a universal experience—birth. Marshall recounts how his mother handled his pregnancy: “not-mom was dealing / with the news, teary faced / & stressed.” This poignancy initiates a narrative that evolves throughout the work, describing the difficulties of being black and observing all that the world held out of his reach.

Each piece, whether performed as a duet or single, packs the words of both poets in a mixture of their characteristic styles.

Coval’s poem recalls his early childhood, “twisting tires caps / from expensive whips to fit / on our dirt bikes.” His focus is captured by the culture surrounding his youth, referencing Flavor Flav and the Beastie Boys. When he mentions such popular icons, the audience visibly smiles and nods—like Coval, they’re figuring out how their own lives fit back into 1989 Marshall and Coval use 1989, The Number to consolidate their experiences of a turbulent era. Why they chose to look back to 1989

now became clearer at the conclusion of the performance, when the audience gave a standing ovation. Intermingled in the crowd of enthusiastically clapping adults were teenagers, including one of Marshall’s students, who, in 2016, is about the same age as Marshall was in his recollections. In 1989, The Number, the young Marshall and Coval pass down their experiences, helping a new generation of young people to inform and understand their own lives. ¬

COLUMN

Hiding in Plain Sight An homage to movie palaces on the South Side

Karen Ford This column is one in the Weekly's monthly series of featured columnists. If you're interested in writing for us, contact editor@southsideweekly.com.

R

emember when you could have a Saturday night movie date in a grand old neighborhood movie theater with a screen as big as half a city block? Today, many of those theaters are gone, torn down to make way for parking lots, grocery stores and other less grand buildings.

Before thousands stormed the mall multiplex, the average American saw movies at grand movie houses. Chicago was no exception. The birthplace of the film industry, Chicago’s movie houses were big and ornate, often with gilded walls and beautiful ceiling murals.

The South Side still has several of those majestic movie houses hanging on. Bridgeport residents and others driving on Halsted Street pass the old Ramova. The Avalon has been renovated and is now the New Regal Theater, reminding us of the original Regal on King Drive that was torn down to make way for a parking lot.

Although most of the big movie palaces have been replaced by parking lots and other modern structures, there are several movie theaters on the South Side that are hiding in plain sight. They are available for viewing if you know where to look.

The Beverly The Beverly Theater (1543 W. 95th St.) was a one-screen, 1,200-seat theater located in the Beverly neighborhood of Chicago. Warner Brothers owned the theater at first, until the Coston family took it over in the mid-fifties and operated it until 1976, when it closed.

Since 1979, the theater has been the home of the Third Baptist Church of Chicago, but the original edifice still exists—upon entering the church, you can still see the beauty of the movie theater that was once there.

The Highland In the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the corner of 79th Street and Ashland Avenue is the Ambassadors for Christ Church. It was originally the Highland Theater (7859 S. Ashland Ave.). This magnificent structure has been the site for high school graduations and theatrical performances, but walking in the lobby, you see what a splendid movie house it once was.

The Highland Theater opened in 1926 as a one screen theater with over 2,000 seats. It was built by architects Newhouse and Bernham, the firm that designed the last incarnation of downtown’s McVickers Theater.

The Highland closed over thirty years ago, reopening as the Ambassadors for Christ Church.

The Jeffery In South Shore, east of Park Manor, sits the Jeffery Theater (1952 E. 71st St.). This one screen, 1,798 seat theater was built in 1923 as part of the Cooney Brothers circuit, playing movies and vaudeville acts.

Warner Brothers operated the theater in the thirties and forties, showing only movies.

Later, the Coston family, of Beverly Theater fame, also ran the theater. The building was demolished but the façade and lobby are still standing. Those fixtures housed ShoreBank from 1973 until the bank closed in 2010.

C

hicago has always been known for great architecture, but few are aware of the city’s history of building opulent movie houses. The styles were as varied as the inhabitants of the city and ranged from Art Deco to Neoclassical to Moorish. Theaters had lights flashing through the skies and fountains in the lobby. The success of the movie palace industry ushered in the idea that moviegoers were kings and queens deserving of a palace.

Unfortunately, due to the cost of maintenance and the advent of suburban multiplexes, movie palaces have been demolished in most cities with only a few—like the Chicago Theatre downtown, the Music Box in Wrigleyville, the Fox in Atlanta, and the Fox in Detroit— still in operation.

For those of us who had the pleasure of viewing a Saturday matinee or a date night movie on the big screen, we mourn the loss of those movie palaces. Once you’ve seen classics like Star Wars or Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen, viewing them on the television or computer screen is simply not the same. And never will be.

Karen Ford is the author of Thoughts of a Fried Chicken Watermelon Woman and runs the blog caviar-grits.blogspot.com. She lives in Auburn-Gresham. Some of the information in this article can be found on cinematreasures.org ILLUSTRATION BY JAVIER SUAREZ

EVENTS

BULLETIN From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. Wednesday, April 6, 7pm–8:30pm. Free. Register in advance at bit.ly/25p2EBc. (773) 583-7884. haymarketbooks.org

and is hosted in partnership with UIC’s Latino Art Conference and the (In)Justice For All Film Festival. (Anne Li)

Spring Fling for Autism Awareness Resource Fair Bogan Computer Technical High School, 3939 W. 79th St. Saturday, April 9, 8am–12:30pm. Free.

(773) 329-0375. chicagoautism.org

A concern with race and a concern with class are sometimes presented as contradictory.

Academic and activist Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor suggests instead that class power cannot be unsettled until racial hierarchies are demolished; at this event she will advance her understanding of the modern moment in black liberation. (Adam Thorp)

The annual Spring Fling Autism Resource Fair will be dedicated to equipping the public with important information about autism.

Experts in the field as well as various exhibitions will be present in both English and Spanish to give individuals opportunities to learn, network, and grow. (Chigozie Nwachukwu)

Education Conference: Global Literacy

Public Accountability Illinois Recall Governor

International House, 1414 E. 59th St.. Friday, April 8, 8am–2:30pm. Free. (773) 753-2274. arts.uchicago.edu

Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, 3436 S. King Dr. Saturday, April 9, 1:30pm–4:30pm. Free.

(312) 939-5105. iviipo.org

Calling all teachers! Spend the day participating in workshops, lectures, and dialogues that will provide techniques to help your students use broad stories to understand the world.

Don Belt, a professor of journalism at the University of Richmond, will give the keynote address. (Anne Li)

525,746 signatures, the equivalent of fifteen percent of the last gubernatorial election’s total vote. One hundred signatures each from at least twenty-five counties. 150 days to get it all done. The paralysis of Illinois’s hard-edged budget crisis might make a recall of Governor Rauner attractive, but that doesn’t make it easy. This meeting of election lawyers and activists will consider the prospect. (Adam Thorp)

Human Rights and the War on Drugs: Local and International Perspectives Roosevelt University Auditorium Library, 430 S. Michigan Ave. Friday, April 8, 3:15pm–6pm.

Free. (312) 341-4336. roosevelt.edu/icdp Later this month, the United Nations will turn its attention to global drug policy for the first time in nearly two decades. For people convinced that the various fronts of the drug war have done huge damage to human rights, the UN special session on drugs, and this forum a couple of weeks beforehand, represent a huge opportunity to register their views.

(Adam Thorp)

Con Justicia Para Todos Uri Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted St. Opening reception Friday, April 8, 6pm–8pm. Free.

Through May 5, by appointment. (312) 8527717. uri-eichen.com See, explore, and engage at this art exhibition focused on the theme of justice (and injustice) in Latino communities. The exhibition features artists from Pilsen and Little Village,

VISUAL ARTS Latino Art Now! Re-imagining Global Intersections Conference Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. Thursday, April 7, 3pm. UIC Conference Center, 750 S. Halsted St; Friday and Saturday, April 8–9, 9am–5pm. $50 general public. $10 with student ID. iuplr.uic.edu Chicago, a city that has championed Latino visual art, continues that long and rich tradition by hosting the fifth biennial Latino Art Now! Conference. Artists, critics, educators, directors, and art enthusiasts come together to discuss, debate, and examine the state of US Latino art.

(Bilal Othman)

Open Forum: A Visual Conversation on Latinx Contemporary Art ACRE, 1345 W. 19th St. Thursday, April 7, 8pm.

Free. (847) 778-5946. acreresidency.org APRIL 6, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

EVENTS

Stick around after the Latino Art Now! Conference for a casual conversation with Latinx artists and art enthusiasts that will be sure to inspire. Participants are encouraged to present two-to-three-minute visual presentations showcasing the cultural productions of their own or others’ creation. (Sara Cohen)

Brown Profile Art Exhibit Benton House, 3052 S. Gratten Ave. Friday, April 8, 6pm–10 pm. Free. iuplr.uic.edu/springoflatinoart Part of UIC’s Spring of Latino Art, this exhibition features interdisciplinary artwork by local artists Joseph Josue Mora, Yvette Mayorga, and Ricardo “Naco” Gonzalez. The work creatively explores the modern status, everyday experience, and both positive and negative depictions of Mexican Americans, accompanied by music from Roho Garcia. (Sara Cohen)

Propaganda Familiar : Alberto Aguilar Antena, 1755 S. Laflin St. Opening reception Friday, April 8, 6pm–10pm. Through May 6.

Free. antenapilsen.com.

Prolific South Side artist and Arts + Public Life residency alumnus Alberto Aguilar brings his multidisciplinary practice to Antena, a project space in Pilsen. "Propaganda Familiar" features a series of hand-painted signs, similar to those found in grocery stores, that use bilingual wordplay "as a bridge of communication to the private and the public viewer." The exhibition will also include objects (both found and created) and additional signs in shops and displays throughout Pilsen. ( Juliet Eldred)

Latitude Carlos & Dominguez Fine Arts Gallery, 1538 W. Cullerton St. Opening reception Friday, April 8, 6pm–9pm. Through April 16. Free. (773) 5808053. carlosanddominguez.weebly.com This Pilsen gallery’s newest show, "Latitude", features the work of Eric J. Garcia, Salvador Jimenez-Flores, Nicole Marroquin, and Gabriel Villa, four artists who navigate the liminal zones between American and Latino identity with their artwork. (Christopher Good)

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ APRIL 6, 2016

Analog Ram

Artemis Quartet

Research House for Asian Art, 3217 S. Morgan St. Opening reception Friday, April 8, 7pm–9pm.

Through Friday, April 29. Free. (312) 361-3208. researchhouseforasianart.org

Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th St. Friday, April 8. Lecture 6:30pm, show 7:30pm. $35 public, $5 students. (773) 702-2787. chicagopresents. uchicago.edu

When you hear Analog Ram, what comes to mind: wool and horns, or random access memory? Billed as “the return of active memory,” this massive SAIC-curated exhibition uses art to ask whether we’ve outsourced parts of our humanity to technology—and what remains to be done about these “prosthetic memories.”

(Christopher Good)

After cementing their international reputation as world class classical musicians, Berlin-based music group, Artemis Quartet, will make their Chicago debut this coming Friday at the UofC. Expect a riveting program, including classical performances of Beethoven, Janáček, and Wolf. (Bilal Othman)

The Bridge Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, 5850 S. Woodlawn Ave. Opening reception Tuesday, April 12, 5:30pm–8:30pm. Through March 19. Monday– Saturday, 8am–5pm; Sunday 8am–4pm. Free.

(773) 702-2100.

This exhibition crosses borders, creeds, and cultures in an effort to unearth the structures that connect and support those on any side.

Forty-seven self-identifying Arab, Persian, and Jewish contemporary artists come together to bridge the ocean in this East/West traveling exhibition, carrying with them a message of intercultural and inter-religious harmony.

(Corinne Butta)

MUSIC David Banner The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. W. Thursday, April 14. Doors 9pm, show 9:30pm. $20 general admission, $35 VIP. 17+. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com Idiosyncratic Mississippi rapper and activist David Banner, whose remarkable oeuvre includes both 2005’s impeccably filthy single “Play” and the outspoken “F La Policia” from last month’s Before The Box mixtape, comes to The Promontory in a show presented by Chicago nonprofit Creative Cypher, the self-described “Curators of Cool,” as well as the 2016 Chicago International Movies and Music Festival. For Banner, promoting his upcoming album The God Box, it marks a return; he’s been largely unheard from since his 2012 mixtape Sex, Drugs & Video Games.

(Sam Stecklow)

Denzel Curry Reggies Chicago, 2105 S. State St. Saturday, April 9. Doors 6pm, show 6:30pm. $13–$17. All ages. (312) 949-0120. reggieslive.com Twenty-one-year-old “Ult” god Denzel Curry, a Miami Gardens native and former schoolmate of Trayvon Martin, comes to Reggies in the South Loop on the heels of his sophomore album Imperial. Curry occupies a unique space in between trap, OutKast-era Atlanta hip-hop, drill, and Tupac-inspired lyricism that mysteriously has yet to break big nationwide, though it is only a matter of time.

He should expect to win new fans in Chicago.

(Sam Stecklow)

The Dojo Presents: PETRICHOR The Dojo. Saturday, April 9. Gallery opens 7:30pm, music at 8:45pm. $5 suggested donation. (312) 631-8139 (call for address on day of show). facebook.com/thedojochi Petrichor, as defined by Oxford dictionaries, is the “pleasant smell [that] accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.” It’s a good phenomenon, and the perfect name for the Dojo’s newest event: April showers to end a musical drought.

Featuring live sets from The Phone Calls, Doublespeak, Corral, and more. (Christopher Good)

The Residents Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Monday, April 18. Doors 6pm, show 6:30pm. $26 show, $36 show and film screening. 17+. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com It’s been forty-one years, and western civilization is still trying to figure out what to

make of the Residents. Why not give it a try?

The enigmatic, prolific, and bizarre collective of eyeballs in top hats is back to screen The Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents and to perform live. (Christopher Good)

STAGE & SCREEN body ± High Concept Labs at Mana Contemporary Chicago, 2233 S. Throop St. Thursday, April 7, 7:30pm–9pm. $10. (312) 850-0555. highconceptlaboratories.org Technology and bodily movement interact hypnotically in these three live dance performances. With beverages from Lagunitas Brewing Company and artwork by James Moreno, Benjamin Rosenthal, Christine Shallenberg, and Carson Reiners, take the night off to delve into the digital dealings of dance. (Sara Cohen)

If Only I Were That Warrior Chatham 14 Theaters, 210 87th St. Thursday, April 7, 7pm. $6. blackworldcinema.net Fascism, massacres, war crimes: these are the devastating results of Italian colonialism in Ethiopia, an issue If Only I Were That Warrior traces from the early twentieth century to the present day. The screening will be followed by an open discussion. (Christopher Good)

Seeds of Disunion: Classics in Black Stereotypy Film Series: Imitation of Life Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Friday, April 8, 7pm–9:30pm. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org This Depression-era story captures the interracial relationship between two widowed mothers who open a business together. Following the screening, local professors and film historians Miriam Petty and Jacqueline Stewart will lead a discussion on common critiques and stereotypes portrayed in the adaptation.

(Sara Cohen)

The Chicago Maternity Story Kartemquin Films, 1901 W. Wellington Ave. Friday, April 8 through April 14. Free. (773) 472-4366. watch.kartemquin.com

In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Jerry Blumenthal and Gordon Quinn’s documentary organization, Kartemquin is offering online streaming, along with the added package of archival and new materials and relevant interviews. Tune in at your leisure this week for an artistic chronicle of a home birth center’s history, defunding, and fight to stay open. (Sara Cohen)

Self + Otherness: Student Screenings Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Sunday, April 10, 4pm–6pm. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org The winter session of BCH’s free film workshop studied the video essay genre and culminated in video essays of the students’ own—come watch these final projects and, if you’re impressed, stay to learn about the spring session, which begins April 13. ( Julia Aizuss)

Long Day’s Journey Into Night Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through April 10. $38, discounts available for seniors, faculty, and students. (773) 753-4472. courttheatre.org David Auburn directs Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Join aging patriarch James Tyrone at his family home in Connecticut, and watch as the archetypal American dream unravels in the course of an evening. A riveting drama of a couple hours, this journey will no doubt also be long in memory. (Martin Awano)

In the Game West Pullman Library, 830 W. 119th St. Wednesday, April 13, 5:30pm–7:30pm. Free. (312) 747-1425. onebookonechicago.org We’ve all seen Kicking and Screaming and Bend It Like Beckham—but In the Game, a 2015 documentary directed by Maria Finitzo and produced by Chicago’s Kartemquin Films, breaks new ground as it tells the story of an underfunded but unwavering girls’ soccer team in Brighton Park. (Christopher Good)

LIT The Weekly will now use this space to highlight literary events happening across the South Side.

Tan Lin Reading Logan Center for the Arts, Seminar Terrace 801, 915 E. 60th St. Wednesday, April 6, 6pm. Free.

(773) 834-8524. arts.uchicago.edu “The most beautiful page makes you look away from what you are reading,” writes Tan Lin, the author of books of poetry such as Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe and Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking. Lin has a point, but it’s hard to look away from his atom-collider synthesis of twenty-first century anomie and cookbook allusions. (Christopher Good)

Better Living Through Criticism Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Saturday, April 16, 2pm. Free. (773) 752-4381. semcoop.com Join New York Times film critic A. O. Scott for a talk on his recent book Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth. Examine the roles criticism and critical thinking play in our lives, including their ability to enhance our engagement with art. (Anne Li)

South Side Weekly Civic Journalism Workshops

How to Cover an Election A workshop with CNN politics reporter Tal Koppan

Sunday, April 17, 2016 1pm–3pm Experimental Station 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. The Chicago Civic Journalism Project is presented by the South Side Weekly, City Bureau, University of Chicago Careers in Journalism, Arts, and Media, and Chicago Studies.

Story Club South Side Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219-21 S. Morgan St. Tuesday, April 19, 7:30-9:30pm. Free. storyclubchicago.com Light up literature by sharing it live at this monthly open mic. Each of the three performance slots is eight minutes, or enough time for the recommended 1,300 words. The event will be hosted by Andrew Marikis. (Anne Li)

The Frunchroom O’Rourke’s Office, 11064 S. Western Ave. Thursday, April 21, 7:30pm. Free. thefrunchroom.com Enjoy the power and potential of Chicago stories with The Frunchroom’s quarterly reading series, in which five local writers give their thoughts on the South Side. Come early or stay late to celebrate the start of the series’ second year. (Sarah Claypoole)

APRIL 6, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15