SSW 06.01.16 - Summer Issue

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 1, 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 Lit Editor Music Editor Stage & Screen Editor Visual Arts Editor

Hafsa Razi Sarah Claypoole Austin Brown Julia Aizuss Corinne Butta

Contributing Editors Joe Andrews, Eleonora Edreva, Andrew Koski,

Lewis Page, Sammie Spector, Carrie Smith Editors-at-Large Mari Cohen, Ellie Mejia Video Editor Lucia Ahrensdorf Radio Producer Maira Khwaja Social Media Editors Sierra Cheatham, Emily Lipstein, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Layout Editor Baci Weiler Senior Writer: Stephen Urchick Staff Writers: Olivia Adams, Maddie Anderson, Sara Cohen, Christopher Good, Anne Li, Emiliano Burr di Mauro, 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.com

Cover art by Sean Mac

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

The UofC Moves South, Again This past Thursday at a community meeting in Woodlawn, the University of Chicago announced three projects slated for the southern part of its campus. One of them, a new charter school at 63rd Street and University Avenue, is notable for its violation of a 1964 agreement between the UofC and The Woodlawn Organization that stated the university would not develop or own property south of 61st Street. It’s not the first time the UofC’s skirted the deal: it already operates a charter school, UC Woodlawn, at 64th and University, and it helps its employees with down payments on houses in the area. But this may be the first time the institution has officially declared the agreement dead, the result of “community meetings and the feedback from those meetings,” according to the Hyde Park Herald. While this surely isn’t an uncontroversial move, the building at least seems to be architecturally inoffensive. That’s in contrast to another of the university’s nascent projects: the David M. Rubinstein Forum meeting and event space, designed by delightfully named New York architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the design of which prompted one anonymous Weekly staffer to ask, “Why [did] they put a Kit Kat bar in the middle of this building?”

Bronzeville: Civil War Four miles from Indiana Jones’s alma mater in Hyde Park lies an archaeological site that might pique the interest of the intrepid explorer himself. No chests of gold have been exhumed behind the Pershing Magnet School in Bronzeville, but ample evidence of the site’s past life as Camp Douglas, a prisoner camp during the Civil War, has recently been brought to the surface. Researchers from DePaul University and members of the Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation have found such gems as the remnants of a Confederate soldier’s dinner, clay pipes carved into demons and devils, skeletal remnants of the 6,000 soldiers who died of small pox and diseases from malnutrition, and a license plate worn by a horse in 1908. The findings ask more questions than they answer: for one, why do horses need license plates? In hopes that questions like this one can be answered, and with faith that the public will find the answers interesting, the Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation is applying for a spot on the National Register of Historic Places, and also plans to open a museum sometime in the next ten years.

New York Times to the Rescue?

Over the three-day Memorial Day weekend, The New York Times directed a large amount of its resources toward covering gun violence in Chicago, using live Facebook video interviews, periodic social media updates, and twenty-four-hour dispatch teams of National Correspondents to cover every shooting in the city. Prior to the event, the Times promoted their upcoming coverage on Facebook and Twitter, which prompted less-than-enthusiastic responses from some users, who accused the Times of predicting a spike in shootings over the holiday weekend in order to profit off of sensational reporting. @Ice_Jones tweeted, “@jeligon @NYTNational will you guys be sad if Chicago doesn't ‘perform’ as anticipated? How will you get your clicks then?” National Correspondent John Eligon (@jeligon) responded to some of these criticisms in an interview with Englewood residents on Facebook live video, saying that the Times wants to cover each shooting to tell the human side of these stories that are often disregarded as statistics. The coverage actually felt pretty evenhanded overall: the videos allowed residents to share their stories and opinions, and the analysis of Chicago’s violence identified a wider range of causes, including a lack of economic opportunity, chronically underfunded education, and a lack of trust in CPD, which mainstream national media outlets often ignore when they talk about “Chiraq.” This type of coverage is hardly original, however, which was another complaint of some social media users. “Everyone has been talking about the @nytimes piece on Chicago. However, there’s local independent media who told us yrs ago,” tweeted DNAinfo reporter Evan F. Moore (@evanFmoore).

“Not hating on NYT but let’s not pretend they were the first media outlet to extensively document Chicago’s problems.”

THE SUMMER ISSUE the shrine survives

“All of us were amazed at how they went to bat for us.” sonia schlesinger.............................4 bringing back the bus

“It helps them keep hope.” clyde schwab.....................................6 freed and forgotten

Witness misidentification and false testimony did not help his case. adia robinson....................................7 disappearing act

In The Weight of Shadows, his first book, Orduña recounts a lifetime as the “other.” christopher good............................8 accessing home

CHTF advertises an entirely new dimension of accessibility. andrea giugni...................................9 common bond

“Look at what we've got! We've got Chance, we've got Chance!” kezie nwachukwu...........................11 life after death

Pioneers of footwork also contributed to create DJ Rashad’s posthumous project. gozie nwachukwu...........................12 south side summer programs

Arts, science, sports, and other adventures. staff..................................................16 summer music festival guide

Jazz-heads, old-school blues fiends, and radical punkers, rejoice! staff..................................................18

OUR WEBSITE S ON SOUTHSIDEWEEKLY.COM SSW Radio soundcloud.com/south-side-weekly-radio Email Edition southsideweekly.com/email JUNE 1, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

The Shrine Survives

How parishioners, community members, and preservationists saved a landmark Woodlawn church from demolition

BY SONIA SCHLESINGER

W

hen fire struck Woodlawn’s Shrine of Christ the King last October, it took less than two months for the Archdiocese of Chicago to file for permits to tear down the nearly onehundred-year old building, which stands at the corner of 64th and Woodlawn.

A $6 million renovation project on the church had nearly finished when an oily rag, left in the building from the last of the construction work, caught fire by accident.

The fire destroyed most of the building’s interior, the roof, and some of its windows. In December, the Archdiocese filed for demolition permits and explained in a letter to 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 1, 2016

the Shrine’s canon that reparations for the burned building were “cost-prohibitive.”

Neither the fire nor the threat of demolition was unprecedented for Shrine: it burned down once before in 1976, in a suspected arson. The church’s interior, known to have been just as glorious as its outside walls, has never been fully rebuilt.

Several Catholic parishes used the church in the latter half of the twentieth century. As Woodlawn’s demographics changed, and Catholic immigrant groups moved out of what had once been a majority-Irish neighborhood, these parishes lost significant membership. By 2003, there were

so few practicing Catholics in the area that the Archdiocese decided to close the parish and demolish the building. Preservationists mobilized and obtained historic landmark status for the building in 2004. The Archdiocese then gave the building to the Institute of Christ the King, an order of priests based in Italy, of which Shrine of Christ is the U.S. headquarters, effectively saving it. The parish moved into the building in 2007.

In February of this year, two months after being threatened with demolition for the second time this century, the church was saved once again: on February 26, the Archdiocese transferred the deed to the care

COURTESY OF SAVE THE SHRINE

of the Institute, allowing the parish to focus on rebuilding the church. The decision came soon after the Coalition received anonymous donations of $400,000 and $250,000, in addition to the $68,000 they had already raised from more than 580 other donors.

The Coalition to Save the Shrine, as the group of organizers is officially called, has since continued to raise money to help with the reconstruction of the building.

“One of the wonderful things about this story is that for many of the people involved, this was their second save,” said parishioner Emily Nielsen, who lives in Winnetka but comes to the Shrine for mass every Sunday.

So how did lightning strike twice?

A

ctivism has a long history in Woodlawn: resident Gabriel Piemonte calls the neighborhood an “organizers heaven—a million people doing a million things.” When Piemonte heard

FAITH

"In our community we’re sensitive to issues surrounding development, so this feels very familiar to us."

—Gabriel Piemonte, Woodlawn resident

around Christmastime last year that the Archdiocese had filed a permit to demolish a building many Woodlawn residents consider a staple of their community, he and his neighbors began organizing right away.

“When we heard [about the demolition] we were blown away,” said Piemonte.

“Obviously we needed to mobilize and be there, to speak up.” The Commission on Chicago Landmarks, which reviewed the Archdiocese’s demolition permits, told the community that it was too late to save the building, as the review was just a formality, and the decision would be made only at the discretion of the Commission’s staff.

“Of course, as good Chicagoans, we ignored this,” said Piemonte. Parishioners and community members began taking the Commission’s comment cards and filling them in, staging protests, and sending letters to the Archdiocese’s office asking them to reconsider tearing down the building. They were confident that organizing on such a large scale for one building would prove effective. “We started with the sense that although we had a very strong landlord with different ideas than ours, there was at least a chance we might be able to get public support on our side,” said Piemonte.

Support for the protestors grew quickly. As the Archdiocese moved to demolish the building— by January the Archdiocese’s office had specific plans for which portions of the building would come down on which days—the group of protestors organized as the Coalition to Save the Shrine, started an online fundraiser, advertised the cause locally on posters and in newspapers, and invited the press to their rallies. People from around the world wrote letters in support of the Coalition. Meanwhile, the group’s core focused on efforts to portray the architectural gem as essential to the neighborhood’s wellbeing.

“The way we framed it to our neighbors was ‘Why are we creating more empty lots in Woodlawn?’” said organizer and Wood-

lawn resident Mike Medina.

Medina, whose family moved to Woodlawn just after the Shrine of Christ parish moved into the building, explained that urgency surrounding demolition stemmed primarily from residents’ relationship with parishioners. When the Woodlawn block club could not find a place to meet, for example, the parish lent the club space in the church. “[When we moved here] we became friends with the Canons that run it and the parishioners and they were just being good neighbors, not pontificating or trying to spread an agenda,” said Medina. “It was just ‘Hey, come see the place.’ So when the fire happened, our reaction was immediate.

Whatever it was they needed us to do, we were going to try to do it.”

“There’s a relationship that has strengthened because of this crisis but was already there,” Piemonte agreed. “These [parishioners] are needed in our neighborhood and if they’re being threatened we’re being threatened, because in our community we’re sensitive to issues surrounding development, so this feels very familiar to us.”

Even the local café got involved: employees from Robust Coffee, which stands a block north of the Shrine, brought coffee to the Canons the day of the fire, and parishioners often gather at Robust after Sunday mass. Many community members say that business from parishioners, most of whom live in other parts of Chicago or in suburbs more than an hour away, helps keep the coffee shop open.

The residents’ appreciation for the parishioners is reciprocated: “They have been fabulous,” said parishioner and Coalition member Mary Kubacki. “I just can’t say enough nice things about them. Our church is part of their community, but all of us were amazed at how they went to bat for us. People from the neighborhood would see us out front and they would say ‘we’re praying for

you,’ and a lot of these people weren’t even Catholic.”

Though many of these parishioners live in suburbs an hour or more away from Chicago, the beauty of the building brings them into the city every week. Built in the 1920s, the Shrine was designed by Henry Schlacks, an esteemed Chicago architect who designed more than fifteen churches and went on to found the architecture school at Notre Dame. What is now the Shrine of Christ is among his most admired works, and has always attracted large crowds.

Kubacki, who lives in West Joliet, drives an hour to mass with her family on Sundays.

“It’s worth every second in the car,” she says.

“The building itself is an extraordinary piece of history.”

W

hile the Archdiocese has not publicly explained its decision to cancel the demolition, Coalition-members assume that the large anonymous donations, most likely from philanthropists concerned about preservation of a revered piece of architecture, had at least as much influence as the work of Woodlawn residents and parishioners.

So while the people Kubacki calls the Coalition’s “foot soldiers” were mostly residents or parishioners, the building’s history proved significant enough for those without a stake in Woodlawn, or even the Shrine specifically. Preservation Illinois, Landmark Chicago, and the other donors who almost certainly played a major role in reversing the Archdiocese’s decision, placed priority on preserving a building with such a significant architectural legacy.

Many of those involved also hope to fight against the wider impact of church demolitions, which are increasing in number throughout the country.

“If the building is demolished, we hope that it is the beginning of an important discussion about what happens to the re-

maining parishes being closed within the Archdiocese so that we can avoid this happening,” said Bonnie McDonald of Landmarks Illinois before the Archdiocese had reversed its decision.

The work needed to restore the building is significant: Coalition members estimate that the restoration will cost $2.5 million and are continuing to fundraise through a GoFundMe account (they currently have about $1 million). The building’s exterior is still standing, but the bell tower lost its roof.

The main goal, according to Nielsen, is to have this exterior completely sealed off by next winter for protection—the Coalition’s hashtag #savetheshrine has now evolved into #sheltertheshrine. Some work has been done for the church’s long-destroyed interior; by early May, they had cleaned away enough of the rubble for engineers to analyze the building’s support structure and decide what the next steps are. Nielsen said she is confident that the preservation community will continue to show interest, and that such interest could set an important precedent.

“If this all works, and I believe it will work, it could really become a model for… historic churches in Chicago and the U.S. that need more care,” Nielsen said.

As further restoration of the Shrine gets into gear, those most involved in the Coalition are grateful to have come this far.

“We knew God had a plan for us, but that the Archdiocese would deed the properties to the Institute was not even on my radar,” says Kubacki. “I just remember hearing the announcement…it was in the middle of Lent, which was solemn, but the next Sunday was rejoicing Sunday, so we figured that day came early. And we still feel like that. Even though we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work, we’re so blessed to be taking this journey.” ¬

JUNE 1, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

POLITICS

Bringing Back the Bus

Advocacy groups crowdfund bus service for children to visit incarcerated mothers

BY CLYDE SCHWAB

A

t 7am on Saturday, May 21, in the Home Depot Parking lot on 87th Street, a group of children—alongside grandparents, fathers, aunts, and uncles—boarded a bus to see their imprisoned mothers at the Logan Correctional Center.

Despite the cool weather, the tone of the waiting families was decidedly warm— children jumped and laughed while grandmothers chatted.

It’s the first time since December 19 that the bus service has been available after funding was cut because of the Illinois budget impasse. No other public transportation exists for the three-hour journey downstate. Saturday’s trip came as the result of a $10,000 crowdfunding campaign by community organizations Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers (CLAIM), Cabrini Green Legal Aid, Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, and Nehemiah Trinity Rising.

But the money raised only covers two trips to Logan Correctional Center and Decatur Correctional Center, making it far from a permanent solution for many families. And with Governor Rauner promising in a speech this past Sunday to veto a Democratic state budget bill if it reaches his desk, it seems unlikely a long-term answer is coming anytime soon. But despite these looming realities, last week’s trip provided a chance for children to briefly reunite with their mothers, something one relative noted “helps them keep hope.”

Pearl, who is taking care of her grandchildren while her daughter is in prison, was among those greeting people who were waiting to board. Pearl immediately stood out as one of the more cheerful members of the group, but she said that finding out the trips were canceled “was a crushing, horrible experience for me and [my grandchildren] 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 1, 2016

because I knew there was no way I’d be able to drive all the way out here. I was crushed for her eight-year-old. Her two-year-old don’t understand at the moment but he still knows that’s his mom.”

“When he gets out there to see his mom, he’s gonna jump around her, he’s gonna do a hula hoop dance around her,” Pearl continued. “That’s what makes it so important, as soon as he sees his mom he’s like ‘ahhhh!’ It brings joyful tears to my eyes to know this is happening again.”

Barbara, also waiting for others to arrive before boarding, recounted the difficulty of being unable to visit her daughter alongside her two grandchildren, aged fourteen and sixteen. She’s been visiting for the past fourteen years through transportation provided

by Lutheran Social Services of Illinois. Now, because she doesn’t have a car, trip expenses are too great for her to go consistently without the bus service.

Describing the negative effects of separation for her grandchildren, she said, “The kids weren’t doing too good in school, especially Melvin because he’s real close to his mom. There was a big difference within the five months. In the three weeks that we’ve known he was gonna see his mom, he’s been much better. He even brought his grade report, which is all A’s and B’s, and before it was like C’s and D’s, so he’s back up.”

The visits benefit her daughter as well, Barbara says. “[It] gives her something to live for, some hope.”

“My daughter has been constantly in trouble, she’s been in the hole [solitary confinement] about three times since December,” she continued. “She knows that we’re not gonna come see her, she starts thinking about fighting people who are picking on her. But when she knows we’re coming, she knows it’s the only way she’s gonna see her

COURTESY OF CABRINI GREEN LEGAL AID

kids, so don’t blow it. Otherwise, it’s like, ‘forget it, I’m in here another twenty years anyway. I don’t have nothing to live for.’”

For many families, a prison sentence isn’t the end of the punishment. Maribel, who was waiting to board the bus alongside her grandchild Elijah, noted some of the consequences of separating a mother and child.

“Usually after three months of not seeing her, he starts acting up,” she said. “I have him on therapy, but going to see her helps him emotionally. He needs to hug her and kiss her, and play with her, and sometimes even fight with her… They’re already paying for their punishment, but I don’t think the kids should be paying for it.”

The trips aren’t just a chance for children to see their mothers. According to Alexis Mansfield, the supervising attorney for CLAIM, maintaining a connection to family and community is one of the most important factors in preventing recidivism.

She explained that because mothers are often the primary caregivers, children with mothers in prison will likely end up living with their grandmother, a friend or family member, or in the foster care system. She also noted that, for many, distance and accompanying costs make the trip impossible.

“Studies have shown that the greatest indicator of success post-incarceration is social connectedness, having connections with

friends and family,” Mansfield explained.

“For the mothers, they need to know their children still love them, that they still think of them as a human being, that they still have that bond, and they have someone waiting for them to come home and do well.”

Mansfield said that budget cuts were part of larger systemic issues with both the Illinois budget impasse and the prison industrial complex, and, given that, “the state pays a whole lot of money to keep families apart. They pay over $40,000 a year to send somebody to prison.”

Though there’s little end in sight to Illinois’ budget crisis, Mansfield emphasized that crowdfunding trips isn’t a permanent solution. The coalition of CLAIM, Cabrini Green Legal Aid, Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, and Nehemiah Trinity Rising, alongside the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), is looking to put the trips on the budgets of IDOC and the Illinois Family Preservation Services.

“It’s a matter of bringing attention to this issue through things like...families going out and talking about their experiences at churches and community centers so the government realizes how important this is,” Mansfield said. “I think that by working together with our coalition, the families involved, and the IDOC, we can put enough attention on this issue so that the funding families deserve comes back.” ¬

LIT

Freed and Forgotten

“Exoneree Diaries” calls attention to those fighting for a future after a wrongful conviction

BY ADIA ROBINSON

T

he gaps in our lexicon tell us who and what we as a society often overlook. As Alison Flowers notes in the introduction to her book Exoneree Diaries, there was a long time when the English language didn’t have a word for a person wrongfully convicted of a crime and later released from prison. “This book gives a name to those who do not have one: Exoneree,” she writes.

After their triumphant releases, we rarely hear more about the people whose lives are interrupted by lengthy prison stays for crimes they did not commit. Built on hundreds of interviews with exonerees, their family and friends, criminal justice experts, lawyers, investigators, and students, Exoneree Diaries tells the stories of four exonerees in the Indiana and Chicago area.

Flowers goes on to write in her introduction that living in Chicago gave her access to many exonerees, as Cook County leads the country in number of exonerations. Illinois has one of the more generous compensation laws in the country for those wrongfully convicted, awarding up to $200,000 to exonerees able to prove they are completely innocent—a higher standard of proof than it takes to convict them in the first place—and who are able to prove that they did nothing to assist their guilty verdict.

The book is separated into four sections, each telling the story of a different person: Kristine Bunch, Jacques Rivera, James Kluppelberg, and Antione Day. Flowers looks at how the four of them grapple with

the complexities of returning to the world after being wrongly convicted. In deeply personal accounts, the book gives its readers a near-complete look at each exoneree’s life before, during, and after prison.

Though Exoneree Diaries does not include a narrative centering on a woman of color, it tries to be representative, offering the stories of a white woman, a black man, a Latino man, and a white man. And while the story of each exoneree is unique, they follow broadly similar patterns in their approach to life after release.

All four seek basic happiness: a stable roof over their heads, the ability to support themselves, and companionship. All four feel isolated, but create support networks based on family members and romantic partners, the lawyers and students that helped overturn their convictions, and fellow exonerees.

All four have a degree of difficulty reconnecting with their families after their prison stays. In 1996, Bunch was a young mother in Indiana when she was falsely convicted for arson in a fire that took the life of her three-year-old son. She was separated from her second son Trent, born a few months into her prison stay. Much of her chapter details attempts to build their relationship after her long absence.

And all four have trouble finding work after their conviction. As Flowers explains, before an exoneree can petition for complete innocence, their convictions often remain on record. Kluppelberg, who was wrongly convicted of arson and sentenced to six life sentences, had difficulty finding work after

failing a few background checks. For people with life sentences or near life sentences, prisons rarely offer advancement programs like the ones they offer to inmates with shorter terms. As Kluppelberg’s lawyers realize when they try to help him get settled, Flowers writes, “There was no playbook for helping an exoneree set up his life after nearly a quarter of a century behind bars.”

Going into Exoneree Diaries, one might be inclined to believe that the police officers and other people that bring about wrong convictions do so by mistake, not out of malice. But in her afterword, Flowers addresses the fact that there are a number of police detectives and victims of crimes that stand by their original convictions, refusing to admit wrongdoing or errors. Rivera, a former Latin Kings gang member, was wrongly convicted of the murder of a rival gang member. In his case, Orlando Lopez, twelve years old at the time of Rivera’s conviction and the only witness to the crime, accidentally misidentified Rivera as a suspect. Even though Lopez realized his mistake, he still identified Rivera in court after direction from officers. Lopez recanted his testimony nearly twenty years after the conviction, one of many pieces of evidence that helped overturn Rivera’s conviction. The book is full of such stories—accounts of police misconduct, false testimony, and blatant tampering of evidence—that make it clear just how severely our judicial system can break down.

In all of the cases from the book, the exoneree was advised to take a bench trial and waive their right to a jury. Bench trials

are considered faster and cheaper than jury trials, but they leave a defendant’s fate to the judge and their individual prejudices. That’s what happened in the case of Antione Day. In 1992, Day, a former member of the Vice Lords gang, was convicted of murder and attempted murder by a judge who believed prison time deterred crime. Of course, poor representation from his lawyer, witness misidentification, and false testimony did not help his case.

Upon returning to the world after their time in prison, each exoneree in Exoneree Diaries tries to rebuild their life and come to terms with what has happened to them.

All four turn to educating others and speaking to at-risk youth. Day, partnering with the Life After Innocence Project at Loyola University, worked to start Life After Justice, a program designed to provide housing for exonerees and help them get back on their feet.

As Day states in the book, “there was no escaping the past,” but all four exonerees found a way to live with their history and move forward. In telling their stories, Flowers highlights the fact that exonerees often become invisible after their release—we rarely recognize that there is a person left with the difficult task of rebuilding a life. Throughout his healing process Rivera would tell people about his story, his wrongful conviction, and what happened to him afterward. “He wants people to know him,” a co-worker said in the book. Because of Alison Flowers’s Exoneree Diaries, now we do. ¬

JUNE 1, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

LIT

Disappearing Act

José Orduña's "The Weight of Shadows"

BY CHRISTOPHER GOOD

F

or José Orduña, immigration policy registers as surreal. On account of legal fictions—paperwork, borders, citizenship—human beings are taken at gunpoint, carted about in caged backseats, and shuffled through courtrooms in shackles.

When you consider just how the American border is policed, is there any other way to rationalize it?

In The Weight of Shadows, his first book, Orduña recounts a lifetime as the “other,” from his childhood as resident alien to his naturalization as an American citizen in 2011. When distilled to a synopsis, it reads like an underdog story. But Orduña, an adjunct at the University of Iowa who was born in Veracruz but raised in Bucktown, renders immigration policy with both the panache of a writer and the dread of someone who’s lived through it firsthand. It’s hard to say whether The Weight of Shadows is more disturbing in the anecdotal or the statistical, but it lacks for neither.

Over the course of the book’s twohundred-odd pages, Orduña narrates a near-endless list of human miseries: broken femurs neglected by Border Patrol officers, gun-touting vigilante bands prowling the desert, children left unattended by parents detained in traffic stops. But he delivers mind-numbing statistics with similar ease: for instance, that even the Border Patrol’s own low estimates suggest that “nearly as many people have died trying to cross the southern border into the United States as there were U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.”

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 1, 2016

The lethal risks that migrants face—exposure, dehydration, heat stroke—are, according to Orduña, not incidental, but “the letter and spirit” of U.S. policy. The Sonoran Desert, he writes, helps “not only to carry out the deeds, but also to obfuscate lines of causality and responsibility. It [makes] those who died in it seem responsible for their own disappearance”—and so disappearances play out much in the same way they did in Chile and in Guatemala.

Although much of Shadows revolves around the long road toward citizenship, the last quarter of the book focuses primarily on Orduña’s work with No More Deaths, a humanitarian group which works to save the lives of migrants crossing the border by providing water and medical attention.

With his own citizenship recently secured, Orduña and a team of volunteers rove the desert—where they are frequently confronted and surrounded by armed Border Control officials.

Orduña’s advocacy with No More Deaths eventually takes him from the heat of the desert to air-conditioned federal buildings—but American rule of law seems no more just on the other side of the borderlands. When he observes the en masse trial of detainees in an Arizona courtroom, he remarks that it has the anachronistic air of a historical reenactment. How else does one make sense of the denial of immigrants searching for a better life, particularly when one’s own nation has been “deeply involved in creating the conditions being fled?”

For Orduña, it is not only the border, but the courtroom, “where justice reaches its vanishing point, sheds its veneer, and reveals itself fully as punishment.”

Just as Orduña’s existence in America is divided between two distinct identities, Shadows is a hybrid work: at once memoir and polemic. At times, it’s deeply personal and confessional—and yet, it’s interspersed with enough contextual information to warrant a fourteen-page bibliography. But this duality speaks less to Orduña’s intimate knowledge of American immigration policy than to the conflict at the heart of the book: the intersection between the human and the institution, and the violence that results.

And so, just as the individual narratives of immigration dovetail with the structural, Orduña notes the ways in which his own life intersects with the broader history of immigration in America: “the eternal return of the circumstances into which [he] was born,” a sort of dual consciousness. He writes about singing along to “La Guacamaya” as a child in Chicago, but also recalls being handed his first identification card and being lectured by his mother about violence inflicted by el estado in Tlatelolco.

Indeed, Orduña’s relationship with the state is convoluted, but he does eventually secure his American citizenship. After living in Chicago for twenty years, he writes, it feels significant to be naturalized “under the sign of Obama, the record-breaking deporter in chief, with Hoover, the president during the beginning of the Mexican Repa-

triation, in retrograde.”

Even with his own citizenship now five years old, Orduña is well aware of just how fleeting security is for migrant Chicagoans.

Raids spearheaded by la migra—Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)— continue to sweep across Little Village and Albany Park. It’s practically Faustian, he writes, to feel “relieved about no longer being deportable by the same state that can still easily [kill him] ‘legally’ and with absolute impunity.” The immigrant experience might be dictated by paperwork, but in an era of surveillance and racial profiling, it doesn’t end with it.

Near the end of Shadows, Orduña discusses Fenómeno, a work by the Mexican artist Remedios Varo. In the painting, a shadow—blank, dark, featureless—stands in a courtyard, with the image of a man cast across the ground as if it were the shadow.

For Orduña, the surrealism of the painting reflects the surrealism inherent to the immigrant experience: it “serves as a kind of spirit photograph, a depiction of the zeitgeist.”

And what does that photograph depict?

Someone “made invisible in plain sight— that is, invisible to the civic body in which one continues to exist[.] Someone turned into a walking shadow, with the dimensionality of a person but without the possibility of recognition.”

Orduña stands upright—a legal citizen, enfranchised and recognized. But if The Weight of Shadows is anything to go by, these are cold comforts. ¬

STAGE & SCREEN

Accessing Home

The Chicago Home Theater Festival offers a remarkably intimate experience

BY ANDREA GIUGNI

G

etting off at the Bryn Mawr Metra stop, my eyes dart as I searched for a cluster of people on one of the four corner intersections on 71st Street and Jeffery Avenue, the only location given to guests prior to that night. Ticket-buyers were instructed to prepare for “the best housewarming party with a tour,” which still left plenty to the imagination. Walking towards a group of hip and eclectic-looking twenty- to thirty-somethings outfitted with backpacks and bikes, I understand that if this evening is to be in any way productive, enjoyable, or even somehow transformative, I have to exercise trust.

This group had come together for the Chicago Home Theater Festival’s (CHTF) South Shore event, an event which boasted a selection of local artists and performers and promised to be a night of renewal by inviting “strangers into each other’s homes to share an intimate meal, experience transformative art, and build intentional community across lines of difference,” according to CHTF's website. Established in 2010 as a space for boundary-testing art and critical social conversations, the Home Theater Festival reached Chicago in 2012, where it’s spread further: this year’s events numbered ten, in neighborhoods ranging from Rogers Park down to Greater Grand Crossing. It originated as a community-building program that highlights often marginalized narratives: those of artists of color, women, femmes, immigrants, LGBTQ+ populations, and artists with disabilities. By bridging these narratives through the nuclear nature of a home, CHTF advertises an entirely new dimension of accessibility.

After a few harried introductions between participants old and new, the tour guide, Sam, rallies our small group of amateur anthropologists, art enthusiasts, and urban adventurers for a walking tour through the Bryn Mawr section of South Shore.

Taking on the cohesion of children being led by an elementary school teacher, we venture towards our first stop just a street or two away, the Jeffery Theater. This 1923 theater, as Sam explained, is a South Shore staple, originally a Neoclassical vaudeville and

movie house and later a full-blown movie theater operated by the Warner Brothers in the late 1930s.

As an older woman tells me about her son’s upcoming participation in tonight’s program and two Bronzeville residents beside me discuss the neighborhood’s changes over the years, I feel more attuned than alienated. This isn’t a kitschy tour; it is a group of Chicago residents deeply invested in this cohesively fragmented city, invested in reaching across those very lines of difference that become apparent when people from different neighborhoods and backgrounds come together in an act of discovery. I reveal more about myself—where I’m from, where I live, where my interests lie—to strangers who do the same. This very loose structure, which at first terrified me as a newcomer, becomes a sort of leveling field.

The potentially awkward situation of having to introduce yourself to strangers who you will share an entire night with becomes, instead, funny and welcoming because of everyone’s open-mindedness and warmth.

We continue walking through Bryn Mawr, breezing past a residential home constructed by Frank Lloyd Wright and taking pictures by the South Shore Cultural Center— wearing comfortable sneakers was a good choice. Soon, we cross a set of train tracks and reconvene on a neighborhood sidewalk.

Once everyone has made it, Sam announces that we will head over to “our” home for the evening, hosted by Aon Global Leader and Teen Living Programs board member LaShana Jackson and visual artist Faheem Majeed. The announcement that there will be s’mores elicits cheers from the weary walking crew.

As we arrive at the house, we are presented with a performance. The porch becomes an impromptu stage as three actresses engage in a piece dissecting “hood girl politics.” They spit hilarious rapid-fire lines at each other, telling the fictionalized stories of women in the neighborhood, resulting in a commentary on the way women’s relationships and bodies are appropriated and discussed in public friendships and family circles. The sudden nature of the performance

ANDREA GIUGNI

immediately reels in the group and urges us to understand the space we are about to enter, one in which questions of race and gender are not only valid, but voiced. This shift from exploring the neighborhood’s landmarks turns our consideration inwardas we are ushered inside, instructed to set our coats in the coat closet and make ourselves at home. Elizabeth Axtman, founder of Bad News Women (BNW), an online space which aims to support and affirm black women through social media, further sets the mood by streaming images from the BNW Instagram account. Our hosts offer us dinner: warm pasta and salmon in the kitchen, plenty of varied beverages outside.

Perhaps surprisingly, I feel almost completely at home.

The performances kick off with an introduction by Sam and our hosts, along with a brief review of the evening—an online reading of essays by transdisciplinary artist and writer Maya Mackrandilal, a poetry reading by Somali-American poet Ladan Osman, a performance by vocalist Gira Dahnee, and work by interdisciplinary artist Stephanie Graham and poet Heather "Byrd" Roberts. As more people shuffle in and grab plates of hot food, the artists perform pieces that speak truthfully about the night’s overarching theme: celebrat-

ing women of color whose work, according to the CHTF website, “in some form, represent manifestos which by identifying personal and familiar narratives perform womanhood and cultural heritage.” I listen to Ladan Osman’s incisive and lovely poems about growing up as a black woman in Ohio, sway to Gira Dahnee’s grainy vocals and wistful lyrics as she asks us to imagine the experience of being a black woman walking down a street, and laugh to Mackrandilal’s essays about white privilege. I do all of this along with strangers I would now call my friends. Back in the living room, Sam asks us to engage in CHTF’s core tradition by turning to our neighbor and sharing the story of how we got here: an effort to bring to light questions of inclusivity and inaccessibility. I got Lee, a photographer for the festival who just started attending CHTF events in the past month.

“Honestly, this is just one of the coolest things,” he says. “I’ve been to a couple of these and every time, it’s different. You see how people open up to each other and are so willing to engage in conversations about themselves and about difficult topics like race and gender. And being in people’s homes really makes it a communal experience. Each time, it becomes a really warm and revolutionary space.” JUNE 1, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

VISUAL ARTS

KEZIE NWACHUKWU

Common Bond

A mural featuring Chance the Rapper and Common comes to Chatham

BY KEZIE NWACHUKWU

N

ew art has come to Chatham. The side of a storefront building at 79th Street and Evans Avenue is now home to “Chatham 2.0,” a mural project by Chris Devins that has attracted some national attention for its star-studded cast.

The main mural is composed of three distinct images: one declares “Chatham 2.0” in blue and yellow, while another simply states “You are beautiful,” and the last depicts the smiling face of rapper and Chatham native Common. Around the corner, two contrasting images of another rapper and Chatham native, Chance the Rapper, are up on display. Shortly after they went up, these images of Chance and Common (surprise, surprise) went viral, showing up on hip-hop websites such as Pigeons & Planes, the BoomBox, and AllHipHop. The mural was commissioned by Eiran Feldman of First InSite Realty, which owns the building where the murals are painted.

Devins hails from Hyde Park, and has a degree in urban planning from the University of Illinois at Chicago; before he became interested in the intersection between art and urban space, he originally wanted to be a musician. Over the past few years he has worked on photorealistic murals in multiple Chicago neighborhoods, including projects titled “Hyde Park Heroes,” “Bronzeville Legends,” and the “Pullman Porter.” Devins’ aim with these pieces is not for his works to be seen as art pieces in the traditional sense, but for them to be “selfie stations”—interactive art for the community to engage with.

The interactive potential of Devins’ art 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 1, 2016

aims to inspire Chatham residents to put forth more initiatives to build and grow their community. He says he tries to weave that knowledge of technical planning with his self-taught art ability. “It used to be that only rich people could do things for the community,” he says. “But now...you don't have to wait to do things for yourself and [your neighborhood].”

It is his hope that when they see murals like “Chatham 2.0,” residents young and old will start projects of their own to develop the neighborhood. So far, at least, it seems that Devin’s emphasis on resident participation has paid off, creating a positive relationship between the art, the artist, and Chatham community members. While walking by the mural Devins has received smiles, waves, and greetings from people walking across the street. This reflects another aim of the “Chatham 2.0” murals, which is to uplift the attitude of community members. Devins creates with an explicit emphasis on evoking positivity in observers of his art.

“It is especially important for a community where people may not feel beautiful all the time, internally or externally,” he says.

This commitment to affirming positivity comes from Devins’ belief that the real identity of many Chicago neighborhoods has been lost in a haze of negative portrayals by the mainstream media.

“Well, you know the media has a saying, ‘if it bleeds it leads,’ meaning they need news [about violence] to fill that hole,” he says. “They like to report a story that will shake everybody...so a lot of times, just by

the nature of the business that they do, they report on negative stuff.”

To counteract these negative portrayals, Devins tries to use mural photos of successful residents of the neighborhood to illustrate that success stories are all around them.

Devins chose Chance and Common for the Chatham murals because he perceives these two as “focal points” that embody the potential success of the entire neighborhood and instill pride in members of the community.

“People are like ‘Look at what we’ve got!

We’ve got Chance, we’ve got Chance!’ ” he says. He also believes that a central part of affirming community identity is encouraging individuals from other parts of town to visit the neighborhood.

“You came over because you were interested in the identity of this community because Chance and Common are from around here,” he says, “and now it translates into economic sustainability, because now we’re spending a little money, we’re in the neighborhood, we’re making connections, we know a little bit more about the community—that’s the effect of public art.”

But although his projects have always been about building neighborhood identity, Devins doesn’t restrict his community building efforts to one neighborhood, because he believes divisions between neighborhoods shouldn’t exist in the first place.

“I’m going from community to community because they tried to separate us,” he says. “Hyde Park. Chatham. Bronzeville.”

By keeping the theme of his murals constant across several neighborhoods, he hopes to

promote a kind of unity between different communities on the South Side.

However, Devins’ work in communities such as Chatham and Bronzeville elicits the question: should he, an outsider in many of the communities he creates in, be the one attempting to enhance these communities?

Devins understands the sentiment and does admit that he is an outsider to some degree, but also thinks of himself as a “supporter of these communities” who aims to understand the “inside” of them. He claims to be the opposite of some muralists he describes as “occupiers,” who put their art in a community without connecting to the community or seeking to understand the community’s identity.

To supplement his understanding, Devins says he does expansive research on each community he goes into. For “Chatham 2.0,” for example, he looked into the historical past of Chatham, spoke with community leaders and the alderman, and, most importantly for him, got input from neighborhood residents. For Devins, this research culminates in a better idea of the art he wants to create and the feelings he wants to evoke.

The name for the project, “Chatham 2.0,” indicates Devins’ desire to “reboot” the neighborhood through public art. Outsider or not, his work seems to have gone a little ways toward making that happen—the good news, of course, is that he’s not alone in his efforts to make Chatham a better place to be. ¬

JUNE 1, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

MUSIC

DJ Rashad

Life After Death A look at “Afterlife,” the posthumous album from DJ Rashad

BY GOZIE NWACHUKWU

F

ootwork is from Chicago—there’s no other way to say it. It’s a musical movement that comes from joy, to be sure, and the pleasures of motion, but the artists behind the genre see Chicago not just as a city but as a place to nurture creativity, expression, and community. When exposed to the quick and rhythmic sensations of footwork music, dancers are compelled to move in new and exciting ways.

Every movement is carried by someone.

Footwork’s most important icon was probably the late DJ Rashad: he founded the influential footwork label Teklife, and his legendary album Double Cup (its cover shows an aerial view of Chicago by night) transformed footwork forever and dictated a notable shift in popular music generally. That’s why his death in 2014 delivered the movement a substantial blow—the genre had lost one of its greatest patrons.

In an effort to preserve Rashad’s legacy, Afterlife was assembled posthumously and released in April. It’s a compilation of fifteen unreleased songs created before Rashad had finished Double Cup. A listen through the album reveals footwork’s dynamic nature, showcased through looped vocal samples and jittery hi-hats. The music also demonstrates a unique honesty and a desire to portray emotion in a frank, exuberant manner. Lyrics such as “smoke like a junky and fuck like a nympho” prove that DJ Rashad wasn’t interested in creating art that didn’t represent who he was, or that adhered to conventional standards of politeness.

Critics have argued that the tracks on Afterlife are too independent of one another, and that the resulting incoherence diminishes the work as a whole. But when we consider DJ Rashad as an individual, this independence becomes one of the album’s greatest strengths.

Many who knew DJ Rashad credited him for

his inclusive attitude towards his peers, and his willingness to integrate their work with his— he was described as an artist who was always open to collaboration. It’s this congenial personality that also accounts for how heavily Rashad influenced the growth of footwork as a movement. Every song on Afterlife has at least one feature, reflecting Rashad’s unique ability to make his art communal. In that sense, the album is just as much a Teklife production as a DJ Rashad one.

This fact is underscored by the presence on the album of younger Teklife producers like Taso, DJ Taye, and DJ Earl, who show off the varied directions footwork has been taking recently. Though each song on the album certainly fits squarely within the footwork genre, many also contain unique components that make them distinct from the genre’s traditional forms. For example, while “Roll up That Loud” contains traditional elements of footwork, layering hi-hats and synths over looped vocals, “Wear Her Pussy Out” stretches the role of samples by having them transition from the forefront of the song to an accompaniment position. The list of variations goes on: Gantman, another producer, utilizes sprinkler hi-hats and drum rolls during “Ratchet City,” while Tripletrain, a New York footwork duo, harness the melodies of smooth synths during “Pass That.”

From Traxman’s digital melodies on “Lost Worlds” to DJ Spinn’s brooding rhythms on “Oh God,” many original pioneers of footwork also contributed to complete DJ Rashad’s posthumous project. Through the diversity of his features, DJ Rashad played a crucial role in linking the past with the present, and this album shows just how well-suited he was for that role. Although Afterlife may not be as cohesive as Double Cup, its variety and potential to inspire new innovation will probably promote footwork’s future overall.

In order to create Afterlife, an album intended to honor DJ Rashad’s legacy, Teklife employed the talents of twelve producers from the label. Each of these producers is not only a part of Teklife, but a unique character that will continue to contribute to the future of Chicago footwork.

We’ve highlighted each of them here, along with some of their accomplishments.

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 1, 2016

Despite his recent death in 2014, DJ Rashad is often credited as the man who revitalized Chicago footwork. As shown in his breakout album Double Cup, Rashad managed to prove not just the potency of the dance form in battle-oriented environments, but also the many familial aspects underpinning the genre. He was also known to be someone extremely open to collaboration—his tour bus would not only hold musicians and other DJs, but also dancers. In that sense, Rashad didn’t just define footwork’s boundaries, but also broadened its definition and scope.

DJ Spinn

A partner and longtime collaborator with Rashad, DJ Spinn has also put his personal mark on the international footworking community. As the current figurehead of the Teklife label, he’s working not only to continue the legacy of DJ Rashad, but to sustain footwork’s modern appeal by signing several newer and lesser-known artists.

Taso

A member of Teklife since 2012, Taso’s musical abilities extend further than just being a DJ. He is also a multi-instrumentalist who has a degree in audio engineering. His diverse skillset shows that Teklife has the experience to push Chicago footwork forward.

Boylan

A high school science teacher by day, Boylan moonlights as a member of both Teklife and the Ghetto Teknitians. With over a decade of experience as a producer and DJ, Boylan is another example of Teklife’s depth.

Tripletrain

Based in New York, the duo known as Tripletrain work to develop footwork’s increased influence throughout the United States. Both of its members, DJ DBK and DJ Mel Gibson, have substantially influenced the electronic footwork scene in New York and elsewhere.

Traxman

Traxman started off producing ghetto house, influenced by the sound of Ron Hardy.

However, as time went on, Traxman developed his own identity and became a central figure in the Chicago footwork scene. Nicknamed “Pacman Juke,” Traxman’s ability to integrate sounds from 8-bit videogames into his music gives his work both a unique sense of identity and a tie to digital culture.

DJ Earl

While he got his start in dance battles, DJ Earl became involved in footwork after meeting DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn. Soon, he joined the Ghetto Teknitians, a group of footwork DJs who are also a part of the Teklife music label. He’s since become an important player in the next generation of Chicago footwork.

DJ Taye

After bonding with his high school friends over the allure of footwork, DJ Taye began producing beats of his own. He reached out to both DJ Rashad and DJ Manny, and managed to clinch a spot on the Ghetto Teknitians. He continues to make unique and innovative music through Teklife.

DJ Manny

Hailing from Harvey in Chicago’s south suburbs, DJ Manny mostly grew under the mentorship of both DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn.

Footworking and DJing since the age of ten, the twenty-one-year-old has long since established himself as one of the genre’s most respected up-and-coming talents.

DJ Paypal

Berlin-based DJ Paypal acts as an integral member of Teklife abroad. He's also contributed towards the experimental hip-hop and jazz label Brainfeeder, whose members include Flying Lotus and Thundercat.

Gantman

Although Chicago-based DJ Gantman is thirty-seven, he has been producing since the early eighties—thus, the community knows him as the “The Youngest Professional DJ.” Gantman dropped his first EP by the age of fifteen and began touring around both the U.S. and Europe at eighteen.

DJ Tre

A founding member of both Teklife and the Ghetto Teknitians, DJ Tre didn’t always work as a producer—rather, he began with a focus on dancing, heavily attracted to the juke and footwork scenes but eager to put his own spin on them. Later on, Tre discovered his abilities as a DJ and began working with DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn to pioneer a new sound.

DJ Phil

DJ Phil is another member of the Teklife collective. His music works to not only maintain his local roots, but push Chicago footwork on an international scale through his affiliation with Teklife and their goal in globalizing the genre. ¬

JUNE 1, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 1, 2016

SUMMER

the summer guide south side summer programs

K

ids rejoice! The last day of class for CPS is June 21. But with summer vacation just around the corner, where will students go when they’re not in school?

Like everything else in CPS, the district’s summer programs, including summer school, will face significant budget cuts without help from Springfield, as the Sun-Times reported. So it’s up to nonprofits and private organizations to fill in the gap. In this list, the Weekly samples some of the programming available to South Side kids, featuring arts, science, sports, and other adventures.

COMPILED BY HAFSA RAZI

PERFORMANCE AND ARTS Red Clay Youth Dance Ensemble Hamilton Park, 513 W. 72nd St. July 5th–August 11, Monday–Thursday, 9am–1pm. Ages 13–18. Audition required. Apply at afterschoolmatters.org. (773) 624-8411. redclaydance.com Red Clay, a well-known South Side-based dance troupe with a focus on teen development, brings together talented dancers for a rigorous series of trainings and creative workshops taught in partnership with professional choreographers. Dancers will also

participate in a full roster of performances at a variety of venues over the course of the summer. According to promotional materials, this program is meant to foster “artistic excellence, self-advocacy, and collaboration.”

Red Clay generally receives a high number of applications for the camp. ( Jake Bittle)

Beverly Arts Center Camp Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. June 13–August 19 in two-week sessions, Monday–Friday, 9am–4pm. Ages 5–12. Starting at $379/session. (773) 445-3838. beverlyartscenter.org

ELLEN HAO

JUNE 1, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

The Beverly Arts Center has long been a mainstay of the Beverly/Morgan Park neighborhood, offering a wide array of educational programs and events throughout the year. The Summer Arts Camp staff is well prepared to guide students aged five to twelve in a number of artistic and creative activities: from music and theater to fitness and filmmaking, campers experiment broadly. This year, new options for before and after care are being offered. (Corinne Butta)

Creativity Camp Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. June 13–September 2 in one- or two-week sessions. Monday–Friday, 9am–3pm. Grades pre-K–5. $325-$710/session. (773) 324-5520. hydeparkart.org The Creativity Camp offers a variety of summer programs that aim to spark creativity and awaken imagination. No session is like the others, so every child is bound to find one they love. The “Special Topics Camps” (ages 10+) range from learning to make ceramics, to creating moving sculptures, to discovering how to shoot and develop film.

Mixed media camps (ages 4+) introduce campers to visual and performance arts, and includes fun field trips all around Chicago.

Early care and after care is available from 8am–9am for $15/day and 3pm–5pm for $30/day or $125/week. Campers must be pre-registered. Financial aid awards are available on a rolling basis and applications can be found online. An exhibition or performance is held on the last day of camp to showcase each camper’s work. (Camila Cuesta Arcentales)

Chicago on the Nile: Cultural Arts Program eta Creative Arts, 7558 S. Chicago Ave. June 27–August 12, Monday–Friday, 9am–4pm.

Ages 6–12. $750, with $100 deposit at time of registration. (773) 752-3955. etacreativearts. org With the mission of preserving and promoting the work of African-American artists and creatives within Chicago, eta Creative Arts has long been a resource for educational and professional opportunities. Their summer arts camp, Chicago on the Nile, offers experimentation with an array of creative practices. Campers will experiment broadly: making music, dancing, journaling, and visual art-making are just some of the daily 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 1, 2016

workshops aimed at helping youth aged six to twelve begin to develop their creative voice and tell their stories. The program ends with a showcase on August 12, open to all campers’ friends and families. (Corinne Butta)

JOBS CHA Summer Youth Employment Program Chicago Housing Authority. Ages 16-24. (312) 786-6930. youth.thecha.org Chicago Housing Authority residents ages 16 to 24 (as of June 27, 2016) have the opportunity to take paid jobs through the summer months, sponsored by the Department of Family and Support Services. The program will focus on financial literacy, job skill development, and will offer young adult mentors. Participants can choose from eighteen diverse career focus areas, including community building and revitalization, custodial and facilities maintenance, performing arts, and healthcare. Applications are due June 19, 2016, and must be completed online. (Carrie Smith)

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Project SYNCERE Middle School STEM Camp Olive-Harvey College, 10001 S. Woodlawn Ave. June 27–August 5 in one-week sessions.

Monday–Friday, 8:30am–4:30pm. $275/session; income-based discounts available. Grades 6–8. (773) 982-8261. projectsyncere.org Underwater robotics, bottle rockets, and wearable electronics are just some of the engineering projects students can take on this summer. Founded in 2009 by three African American men with a mission to advance STEM education in underserved communities, Project SYNCERE is offering a six-session summer camp for middle school students with a variety of hands-on challenges designed to teach kids how to apply science and math skills to real world challenges. Applications are open until two weeks prior to the start of each session.

(Carrie Smith)

BLUE1647 Youth Summer Coding

Bootcamps BLUE1647, 1647 S. Blue Island Ave. June 20–July 15 (session 1), July 25–August 19 (session 2). Monday–Friday. Age 7–17. Lunches not provided. $395-$500/session. Register at bit.ly/20QLR5K Everyone knows how to use a website and play a computer game, but not everyone can make one. BLUE1647, a hub for entrepreneurship and tech innovation in Pilsen, plans to change that. The organization will offer summer youth boot camps on web programming, game design, photography and video, robotics, and fashion so you can learn how computer programming connects with your other interests. The camp schedule allows participants to double-up and explore two subject areas at a time. (Kristin Lin)

ENVIRONMENT Sacred Keepers Youth Council Sacred Keepers Sustainability Lab, 4445 S. King Dr., 2nd floor. June 28–August 5. Tuesday–Thursday, 10am–2pm; Friday, 10am– 4:30pm. Ages 16–22. Apply at afterschoolmatters.org. (312) 869-9546. sacredkeepers.org Join the Sacred Keepers Sustainability Lab for a summer of exploring the relationship between nature and human communities.

Youth will learn about both art and urban ecology, taking part in projects to create a mural, build homes for monarch butterflies, and devise scientific investigations. Connect to your natural and urban landscapes and help reinvest in your community. (Hafsa Razi)

Urban Food Production Advanced Internship The Plant Chicago, 1400 W. 46th St. July 6– August 13. Wednesday–Friday, 9am–1pm; Saturday, 9am–5pm. Apply at afterschoolmatters.org. (773) 847-5523. plantchicago.org Aquaponics, leafy greens, healthy soil, hand-kneaded bread—be a part of urban agriculture and sustainable food production movement this summer, as an intern at The Plant Chicago. A South Side organization dedicated to sustainable food, The Plant is located in Back of the Yards and juggles a number of roles in the local food ecosystem, supporting its own aquaponics and outdoor farms, as well as running a farmers market

and offering workshops and programming to the public. Interns will be a part of all parts of the production, helping with the farmers market, both indoor and outdoor farming, bread-making, and educational programming. If your thumbs aren’t already green, they will be by the end of the summer.

(Kristin Lin)

WRITING Investigative and Verse Journalism Summer Series Young Chicago Authors, 1180 N. Milwaukee Ave. July 6–August 13. Wednesday–Friday, 3pm–7pm; Saturday, 11am–3pm. Apply at afterschoolmatters.org. (773) 486-4331. youngchicagoauthors.org Make headlines as an investigative journalist this summer. Young Chicago Authors, the organization that runs the annual city-wide slam poetry extravaganza, Louder Than A Bomb, is hosting a summer series that will allow participants to explore the Chicago around them through multimedia—ranging from verse journalism, poetry, and prose to photography, collage, and audio. In particular, the workshop will focus on investigating the term “Chiraq” through interviewing city residents and reflecting on personal experiences. (Kristin Lin)

SPORTS Volleyball Camp South Suburban College Athletic and Physical Fitness Center, 15800 S. State St., South Holland, IL. June 27–June 30. Daily, 9am–10am and 10am–11am. Starting at $50. 3rd grade through high school. (708) 596-2000 ext. 2334. ssc.edu Venture over to South Suburban College for a one-week volleyball camp, where you’ll learn all the ins and outs of the game.

Elementary and middle schoolers will start off with the basics—serving, passing, hitting, setting—while high schoolers will move on to more advanced skills. Preregister by June 10 for a free volleyball or t-shirt! (Hafsa Razi)

South Side Junior Tennis Camp University of Chicago Laboratory School Tennis

SUMMER

Courts, 1362 E. 59th St. June 4–July 9 (session 1) and July 9–August 13 (session 2). Saturdays, 10am–11am and 10am–12pm. $50/session. K through 8th grade. (312) 651-5015. southsidejuniortennis.org Get a “5-star experience” at South Side Junior Tennis Camp nearly every Saturday this summer. For children ten and under, the camp provides “kid-sized” balls, racquets, and courts, all designed for an experience that’s low in intensity and high in fun. For older children, small class sizes and one-onone training provide the skills and strategy students need to advance in the sport—a gateway program into the tennis world, so to speak. (Hafsa Razi)

OTHER Morgan Park Academy Summer Camp Morgan Park Academy, 2153 W. 111th St. June 27–August 5. Starting at $240. Pre-K through 8th grade. (773) 881-6700. mpasummercamp.org Morgan Park Academy, a private school in Beverly, will offer a wide selection of summer camps with themes including academics, enrichment, fine arts, performing arts, sports, and just plain good old “recreation.”

This means everything from tennis to yoga

summer music festivals

F

or the second year in a row, the Weekly is proud to present its compilation of the best, the breeziest, and the most musical of the South Side’s festivals, just in time for the warm summer weather and sunshine. For those looking for the vibes and the space a festival offers, but maybe something a little different from the big names at the big festivals (and maybe some better prices), look no further. Whether you’re a jazz-head, an old-school blues fiend or a radical punker at heart, we’ve got you covered.

COMPILED BY AUSTIN BROWN

The Englewood Jazz Festival Hamilton Park Cultural Center, 513 W. 72nd St. Saturday, September 17, noon–6pm. englewoodjazzfest.org Although the full lineup for the seventeenth edition of the Englewood Jazz Festival has not been announced, nonprofit organization Live the Spirit’s annual extravaganza will include performances from Rajiv Halim, the Young Masters Ensemble, and Live the Spirit’s own Residency Big Band. Ernest Khabeer Dawkins, the artistic director of the festival, says that the lineup is curated with an emphasis on youth,

innovation, original compositions, and improvisation. The festivities won’t take place until mid-September, but for those who like to plan ahead, unlike the improvising performers, this day of Jazz in Englewood should take its rightful place on the family calendar. (Lewis Page)

Hyde Park Jazz Festival Multiple locations throughout Hyde Park, including outdoor performances on the Midway Plaisance (59th to 60th, Ellis to Woodlawn).

Saturday, September 24 and Sunday, September 25. Free, $5 donation requested. hydeparkjazzfestival.org

to Legos to long division. These camps run the gamut in terms of price and scheduling (some camps last one week, some last almost a month), but they’ll all take place at Morgan Park’s campus on 111th Street.

There are over fifty sessions still available for registration, but they’re going fast. There’s even a “Kitchen Wars” culinary session. ( Jake Bittle)

Little Hands Learning Center Little Hands Learning Center Academy, 10126 S. Western Ave. June 27–August 5. Monday– Friday, 7am–6pm. $1125–$1985 (prices vary by age). Ages infant–12 years. (773) 445-1900. lhlcsummercamp.com

The well-beloved Pitchfork equivalent to Chicago Jazz Festival's Lollapalooza is celebrating its ninth anniversary this year, and pulling out all the stops to do so. The lineup is sure to be as massive and diverse as ever.

The two-day schedule will feature performances from the jazz old guard and young jazz upstarts alike, and will be headlined

by Puerto Rican innovator Miguel Zenón, recent recipient of a MacArthur Genius grant. Ninety-year-old piano deity Randy Weston will also perform. ( Jake Bittle)

Chinatown Summer Fair Chicago's Chinatown, Archer and Wentworth.

Sunday, July 17, 10am–8pm. Free.

This age-old (thirty-seven years running) summer tradition stretches along Chinatown's main drag, taking over the whole neighborhood for a day. The roster of performances includes stage setups with as-yet unannounced acts as well as roving street performers of every kind. Artists and craftspeople will sell their wares, and there will also be food—lots of food. The list of activities goes on and on, occasionally bordering on the wacky: there's a "traveling Childrens Museum," a "Hot Legs" contest (men only), and a "cutest baby" competition. ( Jake Bittle)

Riot Fest Douglas Park, 1401 S. Sacramento Dr. Friday, September 16 to Sunday, September 18.

Gates 11am. $180 three-day pass, $300 VIP.

This Beverly school with two campuses— the “Academy” and the “Ma-Mere's Institute”—will host two weekly summer camps for children ages six weeks to five years, and children ages six years to twelve years.

The curriculum is focused on enhancing a love of learning, with weekly class themes that include “discovering matter” (through chemical reactions) and building your own machine. The cost of admission includes all meals, but excludes an extra fee for bus transportation to various optional field trip locations. ( Jake Bittle) ¬

riotfest.org Now in its eleventh year, Riot Fest returns to "scenic" Douglas Park from September 16 to 18. The music festival and carnival continues its diverse selection of acts with headliners such as Ween, Nas, Morrissey, and all the original members of Misfits reuniting for the first time in thirty-three years. Started in 2005, Riot Fest has taken on multiple incarnations, beginning as a multiple-venue affair all across Chicago, before expanding into an outdoor format in 2012 in Humboldt Park, and finally broadening its presence to Denver and Toronto.

This fall’s lineup promises to once again revisit the nostalgic glory days of punk, hip-hop, and much more. (Troy Ordoñez)

Chicago Blues Fest Grant Park, Jackson and Columbus. Friday, June 10–Sunday, June 12, 11am–9:30pm.

Free. cityofchicago.org Join Corky Siegel, Wee Willie Walker, Curtis Salgado, and many more for the largest of all Chicago’s music festivals. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are packed with performances by premiere blues players, so check the schedule online to plan your visit.

The festival closes Sunday with a tribute to Otis Rush, a guitarist and singer with a distinctive, slow-burning sound. Three days, five stages, and more than 500,000 fans are what makes Chicago the “Blues Capital of the World”—keep it up by coming out this June. (Corinne Butta) JUNE 1, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

KRISS STRESS

Harper Court Summer Music Series Harper Court, 5235 S. Harper Ct. Wednesdays, June 29, July 27, and August 31, 6pm–9pm. Free. (773) 702-0936. harpercourtmusic.com The UofC has teamed up with Eric Williams, owner of The Silver Room, to bring Hyde Park a second year of their summer open-air music series. Last year’s enthusiastic response brings this years performers to the stage; join Makaya McCraven and DJ Duane Powell in June, DJ El Caobo and DJ Kamani Rashad in July, and Africa Hi-Fi and DJ Ron Trent in August. Bring a chair, a friend, and an ear ready to listen.

(Corinne Butta)

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 1, 2016

Ruido Fest Addams/Medill Park, 1301 W. 14th St. Friday, July 8–Sunday, July 10. Friday: doors 3pm; Saturday and Sunday: doors 1pm. Threeday passes: $129.98. Two-day passes: $94.98.

Single day passes: $49.98. All ages. Children under 5 free with paying adult. ruidofest.com For the second year in a row, starting July 8, Chicago’s newest alternative music festival is coming to Adams/Medill Park for a wild time. Enjoy a large lineup of some of the newest and freshest Latino and alternative music. Bands like Natalia Lafourcade, Silverio, Cuca, and Pateon Rococó, have proven they can transcend national borders, appealing to a larger Latin American and U.S. Latino crowd. With acts like legendary Argentine ska band Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and Chilean rock superstars La Ley,

the festival will likely attract a multi-generational audience. Vendors and food trucks will also be on hand to fuel the bouts of dancing and play that will take place over the weekend. A local element will be added to this year’s Ruido Fest, with the involvement of community organizations that focus on “the societal issues that face Latin people in Chicago and abroad.” (Troy Ordoñez)

Fed Up Fest Location TBA. July 29-31, Friday at 5pm to Sunday 9pm, All Ages, Prices $10-20 for donation, no one turned away for lack of funds. fedupfestchicago.tumblr.com Fed Up Fest is a three-day-long, all ages, DIY music and workshop festival celebrating queer and transgender voices in

the punk community. It was created by a collective based on opposing racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, capitalism, and all other “-isms” and “-phobias” at macro and micro levels.

The fest itself will include a large selection of DIY bands eager to make their voices heard as loudly as possible, including ONO, Moor Mother goddess, Homosuperior, Human Being, and The Breathing Light. The final setlist isn’t quite out yet; it’s also constantly expanding as the show gets nearer, with many DIY bands expressing interest to join. There will also be live readings and workshops as well as tables for local artists and organizations that aim to spread the causes of the festival. (Troy Ordoñez) ¬

EVENTS

summer events BULLETIN Listening Session on Housing and Violence John Marshall Law School, 300 S. State St., Room 200. Wednesday, June 1, 9:30am–3pm.

Free. (312) 427-2737. jmls.edu Join speakers and activists from various community organizations as they address the connection between housing and violence. Topics of discussion will include the history of segregation, economic development, and the influence of nonprofits and faith-based organizations in the community. ( Joe Andrews)

Khalil Gibran Muhammad: “Where Did All the White Criminals Go?” International House Assembly Hall, 1414 E. 59th St. Friday, June 3, 6pm–8pm. Free.

(773) 702-8063. csrpc.uchicago.edu It’s a widespread question, but one without easy explanation: why are prisons split along race lines, and why do certain populations tend to get off the hook?

Muhammad, the incoming director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, will discuss the role of race in mass incarceration with faculty from Harvard University. (Christopher Good)

Englewood NeighborWorks Day U.S. Bank courtyard, 815 W. 63rd St. Saturday, June 4, 9am–12:30pm. Free. Volunteers needed. (773) 329-4198. nhschicago.org Rashanah Baldwin, host of the WKKC radio segment “What’s Good in Englewood,” and the Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago are leading a good thing of their own. Home renovation workshops will teach plumbing, landscaping, and home repairs. Faces will also be painted, and food will be free for workshop attendees. (Neal

LEGEND kid-friendly 21+ food provided free

Jochmann)

Invest in Bronzeville: Community Launch Celebration The Forum, 318 E. 43rd St. Saturday, June 4, 2pm–4pm. Free. (773) 285-5000. urban-juncture.com Come and support the Bronzeville community in taking back its neighborhood and rebuilding it into the hub of black culture and commerce it once was. This event provides the opportunity to meet with community leaders and explore new options for investing in the community. At 2:45pm, attendees will travel to Bronzeville Cookin' on East 51st Street. (Troy Ordoñez)

Cook County 4th Police District Community Listening Session Our Lady Gate of Heaven Catholic Church, 2330 E. 99th St. Saturday, June 11, noon– 3pm. Free. (773) 375-3059. ourladygateofheaven.org To build up the relationship between court and community, Our Lady Gate of Heaven will host Cook County’s Justice Advisory Council, Juvenile Justice Division, Juvenile Probation Department, and the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative Community Engagement Committee. Hosts will be all ears; attendees will be all answers, to questions regarding court-involved youth.

(Neal Jochmann)

Demo Night Chicago: Public Engagement in CPS

Reform Initiative, will hone in on the budget cuts and school closings sweeping CPS. (Christopher Good)

It’s Your Park Day McGuane Park, 2901 S. Poplar Ave. Saturday June 18, 10am–2pm. Free. (312) 747-6497. chicagoparkdistrict.com Reduce your carbon footprint by participating in a citywide clean up. Come help the Chicago Parks Foundation mulch trees, replace playground mulch, and clean green spaces in order to enhance our parks and encourage community bonding. You’ll even receive a free t-shirt for your troubles. (Troy Ordoñez)

Screening: “I Am for Peace” Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. Saturday, June 18, 2pm–4:30pm. Free.

(312) 744-3316. wttw.com It’s nearly impossible to read the news or talk with a neighbor without being reminded of gun violence in Chicago—the pain has spread far and wide. But I Am for Peace, which will be screened at an event sponsored by WTTW Channel 11, focuses on hope: namely, the peace marches led by students from Perspectives Charter Schools.

(Christopher Good)

United We Plan: Summer Public Safety Strategy Apostolic Church of God, 6320 S. Dorchester Ave. Thursday, June 23, 6pm–8pm. Free.

(773) 324-6926. acog-chicago.org Residents of Woodlawn are encouraged to join the conversation on public safety in their neighborhood. Come discuss individual and collective measures that can be taken to create a safer and more enjoyable summer for the Woodlawn community. ( Joe Andrews)

Jackson Park Hunger Walk

Robert R. McCormick Foundation, 205 N. Michigan Ave., Ste. 4300. Thursday, June 16, 6pm–8pm. Free. (312) 445-5000. demonight.org

Jackson Park, 6401 S. Stony Island Ave. Saturday, June 25. Registration opens 7am, walk 8:30am–noon. $25 adults, $5 12 and under.

(773) 247-3663. chicagosfoodbank.org

Demonstration? Democracy? With breakout discussions and presentations, Demo Night—a monthly gathering of the politically-minded and the conscientious—involves all of the above. June’s session, which will be led by Kari Theirer of the School

Help alleviate hunger by participating in the 31st Annual Hunger Walk at Jackson Park. The walk will raise awareness of hunger and support a network of pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters that serve Cook

County. All ticket sales and donations will help fund the efforts of the Greater Chicago Food Depository. ( Joe Andrews)

VISUAL ARTS Viernes de Arte Fiesta La Catrina Cafe, 1011 W. 18th St. Friday, June 3, 4pm–10pm. Free. colectivomariposas@gmail.com Summer is here and La Catrina Café is celebrating with a pop-up shop hosted by the artist group Colectivo Mariposas. More than fifteen artists and artisans will be selling their wares to the tune of sets by Javier Becerra and contagious mixes from Sound.

(Corinne Butta)

Promised Land Pilsen Outpost, 1958 W. 21st St. Friday, June 3, 5pm–11pm. Through June 26. Free. (773) 492-2412. pilsenoutpost.com Nicaraguan native Carlos Barberena’s striking prints collectively paint an honest portrait of immigrant experience, portraying the dehumanizing effects of political corruption and immorality. “Migrate” along with the subjects as you travel through the exhibit, and prepare to feel the pain, hope, and beauty from the experiences Barberena so masterfully depicts. (Sara Cohen)

‘What is Movement?’ Workshops High Concept Labs at Mana Contemporary, 2233 S. Throop St. Sunday, June 5, 1:30pm– 4:30pm. $10. (312) 850-0555. highconceptlaboratories.org.

Spring into step this weekend and make your way to High Concept Labs to reflect on our human movement. No experience required; just the desire to learn how to use your body to create form and perform.

(Corinne Butta)

Annual Arts and Crafts Festival The DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. Saturday, July 9 and Sunday, July 10. Free. To be a vendor, apply online by June 30; contact Marilyn Hunter at (773) 420-0600 ext.

224 for more information. (773) 947-0600. dusablemuseum.org The DuSable Museum’s forty-second annuJUNE 1, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

EVENTS

al Arts and Crafts Festival encourages participants to commemorate African-American history and culture through an artistic lens. With free admission, dozens of handmade productions, and accompanying entertainment, plan to spend the weekend at this engaging event. (Sara Cohen)

Rebuild Foundation Summer Party Dorchester Projects, 6916 S. Dorchester Ave. Friday, June 10, 7pm–11pm. $200. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org Rebuild Foundation is celebrating summer with live music, BBQ, drinks, and an art auction. Half of all proceeds will help fund Rebuild Foundation’s ongoing efforts for neighborhood-driven community revitalization. Enjoy the celebration and expect an exclusive preview of their latest neighborhood project. ( Joe Andrews)

You, Me, and Everyone Else Elephant Room Gallery in C.C.’s Art Garage, 2727 S. Mary St. Opening reception Saturday, June 11, 6pm–9pm. Through Sunday, July 31. Free. (312) 361-0281. elephantroomgallery.com To celebrate the Elephant Room’s shiny new Bridgeport location, curator and owner Kimberly Atwood brings the gallery’s largest group exhibition yet. Each of nineteen local artists were challenged to provide a portrait and narrative of an individual subject, culminating in an illustration of the flexibility and complex personal—and interpersonal—nature of portraiture as an art form. (Sara Cohen)

A Girl Walks Home at Night: Paintings The Learning Machine, 3145 S. Morgan St. Opening reception Friday, June 17, 6pm–9pm.

Free. (773) 777-5555. bit.ly/1U8BIg0 From June onward, the Learning Machine will host a collection of new paintings by Erica Jackson and Amanda Joy Calobrisi. Although the exhibition borrows its name from the Iranian cult classic, it’s less concerned with the vampiric than the surrealistic—expect a colorful vision of reality, “slightly askew.” (Christopher Good)

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 1, 2016

PDF/OBJECTS

promontorychicago.com

Mana Contemporary, 2233 S. Throop St. Opening reception Saturday, June 18, 7pm– 10pm. Through Friday, August 12. (312) 850-0555. manacontemporarychicago.com

DJ EARN MONEY and DJ SKoli join Cornell Sanaa in his project to unite perspectives in progressive black music and culture. Presented by CRAVE, this event promises good music to all who are still looking for it. (Neal Jochmann)

It’s the sort of installation linguistics majors write home about: in PDF/OBJECTS, a selection of artwork envisioned and curated

by Jason Lazarus of Florida and Sean Ward of New York, the textual and the physical intertwine. Sculptures and artworks are paired with the PDFs that inspired their creation—and the audience is left to fill in the blanks. (Christopher Good)

Women Street Artists of Latin America: Art Without Fear 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St. Wednesday, June 22, 6pm. Free. (773) 684-1300. semcoop.com.

Join co-authors Rachel Cassandra and Lauren Gucik for a discussion and presentation on street art as a tool for female empowerment and social change. Following the presentation, join them in a simple stencil-making workshop. Bring a t-shirt or tote bag, and walk away with new ways to express yourself. (Corinne Butta)

MUSIC FREE/PHASE Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. June 4–June 18. Daily, 9am, noon, and 7pm. Free. Attractions vary daily. (312) 8575561. rebuild-foundation.org This two-week, three-“node” event is presented by Mendi + Keith Obadike, the New York City Igbo Nigerian couple specializing in site-specific works which treat race, technology, and history astutely.

Segments labeled “Beacon,” “Overcome,” and “Dialogue with DJs” are the product of assiduous research and musical inspiration.

(Neal Jochmann)

Black to the Future The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Saturday, June 4. Doors 2am, show 2pm–7pm. $5. 21+. (312) 801-2100.

Elevation 2016 231 S. LaSalle St. Saturday, June 18, 6pm– midnight. $75, $250 VIP. (312) 380-1644. chicagoacademyofmusic.org Elevation’s annual party of music, fashion, and art benefitting the Chicago Academy of Music returns, intersecting acclaimed artists across all mediums. A VIP reception and exhibit kicks off the night, followed by multiple performances, a fashion show, dancing, and Elevation Awards highlighting renowned artists and their contributions. (Efrain Dorado)

Royce da 5’9” Reggies, 2105 S. State St. Friday, June 3, 8pm. $16 advance, $20 door, $66 VIP. 18+.

(312) 949-0120. reggieslive.com Fresh off the release of his latest album, Layers, Detroit rapper Royce da 5’9” will be performing at Reggies this Friday. Twenty years into his career, Royce continues to push the limits of lyricism, earning his place in the “your-favorite-rapper’s-favorite-rapper” category. ( Joe Andrews)

Luna Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Thursday, July 7. Doors 7:30pm, show 8:30pm. $20. 17+.

(312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com Down for a real chill time? Hit up Thalia Hall for the New York-based four-piece Luna and their dream pop filled with intricate guitar work and poetic lyrics. It’s also part of a ten-year reunion tour if you’re into watching music history, too. (Troy Ordoñez)

Built to Spill Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Friday, June 17. Doors 8pm, show 9pm. $26–$36. 17+.

(312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com

On a major label but still never giving up that indie spirit, Built To Spill is playing a set filled with timeless songs and “eureka” moments, as band leader Doug Martsch calls them. Expect a gripping, exceptional set list. (Troy Ordoñez)

Party Noire After Dark The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Saturday, June 11. Doors 8pm, show 9pm–3am. $10. 21+. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com The Promontory is starting their summer in a fashion Chance the Rapper himself would approve of: getting it poppin’ and jukin’ with a Dance Hall and Juke Joint iteration of their monthly collaboration with Party Noire. (Kanisha Williams)

Pedestrian Deposit and more at CUFF ACRE, 1345 W. 19th St. Friday, June 3, 10pm–2am. $10, cash bar. cuff.org Performances at the self-described “biggest party of the 23rd Annual Chicago Underground Film Festival” will include the experimental duo Pedestrian Deposit, known for their “highly composed, often abstract sound textures” as well as Hogg, a “Chicago-based post-punk industrial psycho-sexual abstraction.” There are three more DJs and artists on the lineup as well.

Get ready for a night of fun…abstract fun! ( Jake Bittle)

Sunn O))) Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Tuesday, June 7. Doors 7pm, show 8pm. $25 online, $30 at door. 17+. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com Together with Seattle’s Hissing and Montreal’s Big Brave, this foursome of cloaked avant-metal masterminds named after an Oregon amp brand (hence the three parentheses) will make sounds both wildly confounding and outrageously loud. (Neal Jochmann)

EVENTS

STAGE & SCREEN 2016 Kirschner Human Rights Memorial Lecture: Gordon Quinn UofC Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th St. Thursday, June 2, 6pm. Free. (773) 834-0858. kartemquin.com As founder and artistic director of Kartemquin Films, Gordon Quinn understands the impact that images of the past have on contemporary social justice movements.

Join him for this year’s memorial lecture, where he will be interviewed by UofC professor Jacqueline Stewart about Kartemquin’s filmography and upcoming release, ‘63 Boycott. ( Joe Andrews)

Friday Staged Reading: The Importance of Being Earnest Augustana Lutheran Church, 5500 S. Woodlawn Ave. Friday, June 3, 8pm. Free. hydeparkcommunityplayers.org Bunbury your way out of your Friday night plans and join the Hyde Park Community Players for a staged reading of Acts 2 and 3 of The Importance of Being Earnest. Scripts and roles will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis. The reading will be followed by a discussion and potluck; bring snacks or a dessert. (Carrie Smith)

Gordon Parks in Cinema: Half Past Autumn Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Sunday, June 5, 4pm–6pm. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org Half Past Autumn is a retrospective on the life of photojournalist, novelist, poet, musician…essentially, jack-of-all-trades Gordon Parks. This screening is the first of a Sunday afternoon series at BCH memorializing the late director of Shaft. Attend, if you can dig it. (Kanisha Williams)

Staged Reading of The River Niger Hamilton Park Cultural Center, 513 W. 72nd St. Monday, June 6, 6:30pm. (773) 7534472. courttheatre.org For its Spotlight Reading Series, Court Theatre is challenging the idea of a “classic”

canon by staging underrated, overlooked plays throughout Chicago. Case in point: a Tyla Abercrumbie-directed staging of Joseph A. Walker’s The River Niger, which tells the story of a black man who leaves the Air Force for an uncertain future.

(Christopher Good)

drF High Concept Labs at Mana Contemporary Chicago, 2233 S. Throop St. Thursday, June 9, 8pm–9:30pm. $10 suggested donation. highconceptlaboratories.org Get drawn into the secret underworld of composer Mark Hardy’s drF, a B-movie-style oratorio. This work-in-progress, which includes a live band, features an extraterrestrial doctor bent on taking over the world, robot monster hybrids, and a private eye in the middle of it all. (Carrie Smith)

An Ideal Husband Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. June 9–11, 8pm; Sunday June 12, 3pm. $10 advance; $12 at the door. hydeparkcommunityplayers.org Love, reputation, and honor hang in the balance in the Hyde Park Community Players’ staging of Oscar Wilde’s classic comedy An Ideal Husband. Directed by Susan Harris—whose blogging will give you a sneak peek of the production—with original music by Bill Hohnke. (Carrie Smith)

One Man, Two Guvnors Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through Sunday, June 12. Full schedule available online. $38, discounts available for students and seniors. (773) 753-4472. courttheatre.org With a comic title and a fondness for fish and chips, Two Guvnors—an adaption of Carlo Goldoni’s classic The Servant of Two Masters, retrofitted for 1963—all but Union hi-Jacks the source material’s hijinks. It’s fast-paced, farcical, and generally ridiculous: in short, quintessentially British humour. (Christopher Good)

Sweet Honey in the Rock Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Sunday, June 12, 4pm–6pm. (312) 857-

JUNE 1, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

EVENTS

5561. rebuild-foundation.org Love a cappella? Have a penchant for blabbing about intersectionality? Here’s one intersection you never thought you’d cross: an a cappella group comprised entirely of black women. This documentary follows the life of the group Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Be sure to attend for an aca-awesome time.

(Kanisha Williams)

Migration eta Creative Arts Foundation, 7558 S. South Chicago Ave. Through Sunday, June 19. Fridays and Saturdays, 8pm; Sundays, 3pm. $35.

(773) 752-3955. etacreativearts.org The history of the Great Migration can be overwhelming—a confluence of important cultural strains, people, and institutions all loaded with historical import. Migration tries to capture the complicated interactions that brought thousands of African Americans to northern cities through music, dance, and dialogue. (Adam Thorp)

Moving Images, Making Cities: 70 Acres in Chicago Black Cinema House, 7200 S Kimbark Ave. Sunday, June 19, 4pm–6pm. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org The first of a year-long series accompanying Place Lab’s Ethical Redevelopment Salon, this documentary reprises the subject of Cabrini-Green, the original filmmakers (Ronit Bezalel and Judy Hoffman), and participants from the 1999 film, Voices of Cabrini. 70 Acres follows the original interviewees and records their feelings on the redevelopment of the housing project fifteen years after its closure. A talk with Bezalel will follow. (Kanisha Williams)

The Funk Underground: Hip Hop + Social Justice Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative, 1456 E. 70th St. Sunday, June 19, 4pm–7pm.

(312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org A little funk never hurt nobody—that’s the spirit to keep alive during The Funk Underground’s upcoming youth workshop.

While on a fourteen-city tour, the Rhode

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 1, 2016

Island collective aims to educate the masses and boogie through talks on race, class, and inequality. Come one, come all. (Kanisha Williams)

Dharma Vision: Toward a Buddhist Aesthetics of Film Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan Ave. Thursday, June 30, 7pm. Free. (773) 7028647. southsideprojections.org Dharma Vision, a screening co-sponsored by the UofC’s Center for East Asian Studies, will compile films with Buddhist themes and imagery for an evening running the gamut from John Campbell’s inkblots to Paul Sharits’s synesthesiac “flicker” films.

It’s not in praise of shadows, but of the absence thereof: zen in moving pictures.

(Christopher Good)

LIT Richard So and Patrick Jagoda Book Release Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Wednesday, June 1, 4:30pm. Free. (773) 7524381. semcoop.com Two University of Chicago assistant professors of English meet at a bookstore.

What do they talk about? In this case, it will probably involve their new books, Jagoda’s Network Aesthetics (a cultural analysis of “networks” in recent decades) and So’s Transpacific Community (the story of post-war Chinese, American, and Chinese-American public figures collaborating to shape cultural perceptions). (Sarah Claypoole)

Marcus Jones at Beverly CPL Chicago Public Library Beverly, 1962 W. 95th St. Wednesday, June 1, 6:30pm–7:45pm. Free.

(312) 747-9673. chipublib.bibliocommons.com Marcus Jones, a celebrated Chicago talk show and cable TV host, as well as an accomplished motivational speaker, will discuss his memoir at the Beverly branch of the Chicago Public Library. The mem-

oir, Everyone Has a Story, This Is Mine tells how Jones grew up without a father on the South Side. ( Jake Bittle)

Melissa Elise Hall at Beverly CPL Chicago Public Library Beverly, 1962 W. 95th St. Monday, June 6, 6:30pm–7:45pm. Free.

(312) 747-9673.chipublib.bibliocommons.com The "writer, mentor, advocate" and founder of the self-improvement-inspiration-positivity movement/website "Moments with Missy" will discuss her motivational book MsMissy Speaks, which offers hope, positivity, empathy, and honesty. "It isn't just a book," Hall's website claims, "it's a roadmap." ( Jake Bittle)

Cook's Delight Book Club at Blackstone CPL Chicago Public Library Blackstone, 4904 S. Lake Park Ave. Saturday, June 11, 1pm– 2:30pm. Free. (312) 747-0511. chipublib. bibliocommons.com Join the "Cookbook Book Club" at the Blackstone branch of the Chicago Public Library for a discussion of Comfort Food Fix, a New York Times-bestselling book that claims to offer healthier takes on traditional American comfort food. Is there such a thing as low-fat, low-sugar, low-calorie meatloaf that actually tastes good? This event hopes to settle it once and for all. ( Jake Bittle)

Grown Folks Stories The Silver Room, 1506 E. 53rd St., Chicago, IL 60615. Thursday, June 16, 8pm–10pm. $5 suggested donation. (773) 947-0024. thesilverroom.com No storytelling circle? No problem. As long as you’re all grown up, The Silver Room’s the place to share your most moving, most ridiculous, or most cathartic stories. Not for the young or faint-of-heart. (Kanisha Williams)

Javanna Plummer at Beverly CPL Chicago Public Library Beverly, 1962 W. 95th St. Monday, June 20, 6pm-7:45pm. (312) 747-9673. chipublib.bibliocommons.com Debating whether or not to meet an author and hear some inspirational fiction? As the author, and her fictional character Monique, would say, “Why not?” The Beverly branch of the Chicago Public Library is hosting the author for a reading you’d be sorry to miss. (Kanisha Williams)

Jam on the Vine 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St. Tuesday, June 21, 6pm. Free. 773-684-1300. semcoop.com Nothing says summer like a story of ingenuity, resistance, and resilience in a city south of the Mason-Dixon line. Compared to works like The Color Purple, LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s Jam on the Vine blends fiction with reality, incorporating narratives from her family. The author herself will visit 57th Street Books to discuss the work.

(Kanisha Williams)

South Side Story Club Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan St. Tuesday, June 21, 7:30pm. $10 suggested donation. (773) 837-0145. storyclubchicago.com Light up literature by sharing it live at this monthly open mic time, themed “True or False.” Each of the three performance slots are eight minutes, or enough time for the recommended 1,300 words. The event will be hosted by Andrew Marikis. (Anne Li)

Indie City Writers Cornell Florist, 1645 E. 55th St. Thursday, June 30, 7pm. Free. (773) 324-1651. cornellflorist.com Celebrate that summer is now in full swing with flowers and fiction. The Indie City Writers’ next stop is at Cornell Florist, and featured artists will include Michael Mills and Kayla Gordon. This summer, ideas are in bloom. (Kanisha Williams)

JUNE 1, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23