SSW 06.24.21

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, artists, photographers, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.

Volume 8, Issue 15 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Managing Editor Martha Bayne Senior Editors Christian Belanger Christopher Good Rachel Kim Emeline Posner Adam Przybyl Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Arts Editor Politics Editor Education Editor Housing Editor Community Organizing Editor Immigration Editor

Isabel Nieves Jim Daley Madeleine Parrish Malik Jackson Chima Ikoro Alma Campos

Contributing Editors Lucia Geng Matt Moore

Francisco Ramírez Pinedo Jocelyn Vega Scott Pemberton Staff Writers Kiran Misra Yiwen Lu Data Editor

Jasmine Mithani

Director of Fact Checking: Charmaine Runes Fact Checkers: Susan Chun, Grace Del Vecchio, Hannah Faris, Kate Gallagher, Maria Maynez, Olivia Stovicek Visuals Editor Haley Tweedell Deputy Visuals Editors Shane Tolentino Mell Montezuma Anna Mason Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma, Shane Tolentino Layout Editors Haley Tweedell Davon Clark Tony Zralka Web Editor AV Benford Social Media Editor Davon Clark Webmaster Pat Sier Managing Director Jason Schumer Director of Operations Brigid Maniates The Weekly is produced by a mostly all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week.

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 Photo by ThoughtPoet

IN CHICAGO IN THIS ISSUE Summer break Tuesday, June 22, was the last day of school for Chicago Public School (CPS) students after less than a semester of in-person learning during an unprecedented pandemic school year. CPS graduates were finally able to walk the stage and families were allowed to attend graduation ceremonies and hug their kids.

Students are scheduled to return to school earlier than usual, on August 30, for the first time in years to make up for "learning loss" during COVID-19 and to have more time to prepare for standardized tests. Local School Councils (LSCs), however, are meeting virtually for the next few weeks to vote on whether to retain or remove their school police officers. CPS officials are also deciding what to do with $1.79 billion in federal relief funds and are considering public input via virtual town halls. Last but not least, a bill for an elected school board is currently on the governor’s desk against Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s will. Check southsideweekly.com for updates.

Chicago Tribune gutted The New York-based hedge fund that seized control of Tribune Publishing last month, Alden Global Capital, is already parasitizing the Tribune for as much quick profit as it can, shedding decades of legacy journalism experience in the process.

In a second round of layoffs, one-fourth of remaining longtime columnists and veteran reporters have accepted buyouts and are penning heartfelt farewells to readers. The newspaper, founded in 1847, is the industry standard of “objective journalism” and achieved feats such as publishing the entire transcripts of the Watergate tapes in 1974, winning eleven Pulitzer prizes in the 1980s and 1990s, and winning five more even as its newsroom shrank in the 2000s. What Chicago’s media landscape will look like in the wake of Alden’s avarice is debatable, but gutting the Tribune will leave a lacuna that other outlets will be hard pressed to fill.

COVID funeral assistance A FEMA program is reimbursing tens of thousands of grieving families for funeral expenses of loved ones who died of COVID-19. People who took on these costs may apply to receive up to $9,000 per funeral and a max of $35,500 in the case of multiple deaths in a family. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to apply for the funds despite high mortality rates in this community, though there are no immigration requirements for the deceased indicated in the application. Applicants must show a death certificate that indicates the cause of death was attributed to COVID, as well as show receipts of the expenses incurred.

Funeral homes may be able to provide the paperwork. To apply, call (844) 684-6333 Monday through Friday, deadline TBA.

public meetings report

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level. india daniels, documenters and scott pemberton............................................................4 chicago police spied on protesters

Why did CPD External Affairs approve an investigation of a demonstration last summer? jim daley.................................................................5 the high price of the city’s shows of force

Idling trucks ahead of protests in April drained half of Streets and Sanitation’s overtime budget for the year. jim daley.................................................................6 chicago’s vaccine disparity widens

An update on Chicago’s vaccination efforts. charmaine runes..................................................8 critical care

Access to healthcare in Englewood was hard before the pandemic, and residents say it’s only gotten worse. yvonne krumrey..................................................10 south shore’s fight for food

As the City looks beyond the pandemic, residents say there’s a long way to go to address food insecurity. courtney kueppers..............................................12 space to breathe

La Villita residents were left with little access to green space during COVID—right when they needed it most. ester wells and marie mendoza......................14 ‘what is a holiday compared to a life?’

Young Chicagoans respond to Juneteenth becoming a recognized federal holiday. chima ikoro.........................................................18 juneteenth

A photo gallery. thoughtpoet......................................................20 a conversation with the team of the little palestine web series, arabica

“The only place in the world that I actually feel at home.” francisco ramírez-pinedo.................................22 calendar

Bulletin and events.

South Side Weekly.............................................26

Public Meetings Report ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLEY APPOLD

June 7 The public can review the Cook County redistricting process and draw their own proposed maps in a designated room in the Cook County Administration Building (118 N. Clark Street, 4th Floor, Room 4A). At a public comment session with the Cook County Board of Commissioners, Commissioner Deborah Sims moved to extend the deadline for public input to September 16. The boundaries of Cook County’s seventeen districts are redrawn every ten years to more accurately represent current demographics. To RSVP, email cookredistricting2020@cookcountyil.gov.

Kenwood community members want to honor the legacy of blues legend Muddy Waters by supporting designation of his former home at 4339 S. Lake Avenue as an historic landmark. They also want to ensure that restoration is completed in a timely manner. Ald. Sophia King (4th Ward) hosted a community meeting to discuss the proposed landmarking of a house Waters owned and made music in from 19541983. Kandalyn Hahn, a City project coordinator with the Chicago Department of Planning and Development, explained that no clean up or development requirement is needed for landmark status.

June 8 Building a Boys & Girls Club on the site of the planned police academy would bring $6 million in private investment to the West Side and complement the Austin and Humboldt Park INVEST South/West Corridors, City planner Ernest Bellamy said at a meeting of the Community Development Commission. The original site layout was “disjointed” with the police academy on one end and Peach’s and Culver's restaurants on the other, separated by a large parking lot, he added. The revised layout would include an 18,000-square-foot, two-story Boys & Girls Club and more pedestrianfriendly areas.

June 9 The process for setting up a farmers market is being streamlined. Independent farmers markets don’t have to pay a fee to register with the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), and DCASE staff are available as a resource, Alisa Baum, City markets program manager, said at a meeting of the City Council Committee on Special Events, Cultural Affairs and Recreation. The city manages farmers markets in Austin, Bronzeville, Daley Plaza, Englewood, Pullman, Roseland, West Humboldt Park, Clark/Division, and Desplaines Street, but more than threequarters of Chicago farmers markets are run independently.

Two members of the Black Heroes Matter coalition asked the City Council Committee on Special Events, Cultural Affairs and Recreation to support Ald. David Moore’s (17th Ward) proposed ordinance to rename outer Lake Shore Drive after Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable. Advocates for the renaming have spoken at several previous meetings. Based on transportation agency documents, new signage reflecting 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 24, 2021

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level for the June 24 issue.

BY INDIA DANIELS, DOCUMENTERS AND SCOTT PEMBERTON

this change has been estimated to cost about $850,000. Lightfoot’s competing proposal to develop the existing Du Sable Park and rename the Riverwalk instead would cost closer to $40 million.

June 10 Ninety-eight percent of people canvassed in Englewood on June 4 and 5 had not received the COVID-19 vaccine, Public Health Commissioner Allison Arwady reported to the City Council Committee on Health and Human Relations during a monthly pandemic update. Fifty-one percent of them expressed interest in being vaccinated, however, Arwardy reported. She doesn’t foresee Chicago mandating COVID-19 vaccination, though schools and employers may choose to mandate maskwearing. Six-month data on vaccine study participants continues to be analyzed, and the emergency use authorization for Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson shots will probably be lifted around September.

June 15 A proposed worker protection ordinance would require employers to provide domestic workers with written contracts. At a meeting of the City Council Committee on Workforce Development, Council members voted to support the ordinance, which is part of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s “Chi Biz Strong” initiative to help businesses coming out of the pandemic. If passed by the full Council, the ordinance would penalize wage theft, require guaranteed paid sick leave for many workers, and lead to a $15-per-hour minimum wage.

June 16 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will receive $1.789 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief III funds as part of the American Rescue Plan for postCOVID recovery. At a special meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, CPS officials presented Moving Forward Together, their plan to use the funds to address learning loss, social/emotional health and resource inequity. Two public online town halls are planned for next week.

June 17 The Chicago Police Department (CPD) provided an overview of its updated foot pursuit policy—which emphasizes sanctity of life, safety and continual assessment of a situation—for the Chicago Police Board. CPD will work with the Inspector General’s office to incorporate feedback, hold more public meetings in August, and finalize the policy in September. Members of the public can read and comment on the proposed foot pursuit policy on CPD’s website through July 15.

June 18 Council members adjourned without voting on two competing police accountability proposals at a meeting of the City Council Committee on Public Safety. Just before the start of the meeting, the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) Ordinance was amended to remove a requirement that 2022 ballots include a binding referendum on the creation of an 11-member commission that would have the power to hire and fire the police superintendent and make other key decisions that currently live with the mayor. While this was supposed to make the ordinance more palatable, several Council members faulted the sponsors for introducing the change at the last minute, and a vote to discuss the substitute ordinance failed by a vote of 10-9. This information was collected in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org.

Chicago Police Spied on Protesters

Why did CPD External Relations approve an investigation of a demonstration last summer?

BY JIM DALEY

I

n July 2020, amid a summer of protests against racism and police brutality sparked by the murder of George Floyd, the Chicago Police Department spied on demonstrators who were exercising their constitutional right to free speech. The investigation was approved by Melissa Stratton, CPD’s then-senior advisor of external relations, records obtained by the Weekly show.

Police were a near-constant presence at demonstrations last year, and sometimes openly recorded protesters with video cameras. Such surveillance, if it is not prompted by First Amendmentprotected speech, is considered typical law enforcement that does not require special approval.

Spying on demonstrators is different.

When police open what a departmental directive refers to as “permissible First Amendment information gathering investigations” of public demonstrations, they must get high-ranking commanders’ approval and the CPD General Counsel’s authorization, which is documented in what the department calls “First Amendment Worksheets.”

These investigations may involve undercover cops, infiltrators, informants, surreptitious video or audio recording, and Stingray cell phone surveillance.

While such investigations are rare, the department has spied on protesters before. According to a 2015 analysis by the Reader, CPD opened a half-dozen First Amendment investigations of activists between 2009 and 2015 around actions such as Occupy Chicago and anti-NATO organizing.

The Weekly submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the police

department for all First Amendment Worksheets filed in 2020. The department provided a single worksheet, which authorized an investigation of a public gathering held on July 25. The CPD General Counsel reviewed the worksheet and apparently signed off on it. While the General Counsel’s signature is redacted— as is the box they would have checked to indicate their approval—Dana O’Malley has had that role since May 2019.

According to the department’s directive, a commanding officer who approves a First Amendment investigation is responsible for filling out the worksheet. In the July 25 investigation, Melissa Stratton is listed as the commanding officer. At the time Stratton was the department’s senior advisor for external relations, a role that oversaw legislative and news affairs.

“Everything done was pursuant to CPD First Amendment orders,” a CPD spokesperson said.

In the First Amendment Worksheets the Reader published in 2015, the commanding officers who approved them were never involved with the department’s news affairs office.

“The opening of a First Amendment investigation on the authority of someone employed in a communications function is troubling,” said Nusrat Choudhury, the legal director at the ACLU of Illinois.

“It is entirely unclear how the experience of dealing with the news media qualifies someone to make a judgment about whether there is reasonable suspicion— not to mention probable cause—of criminal activity.”

W

hatever evidence prompted Stratton to approve the investigation and file the First Amendment Worksheet is unknown, because the section describing the source of information justifying the investigation was redacted.The section titled “Persons or Groups to Be Investigated” was left blank.

The worksheet says police were “only documenting” constitutionally protected activity, and that they didn’t require electronic surveillance or undercover methods in their investigation.

That July saw more than a dozen protests and demonstrations, according to The Triibe’s Black Summer 2020 Timeline.

On July 17—one week before Stratton submitted the worksheet—protesters confronted police who were guarding a statue of Christopher Columbus in Grant Park; the police retreated before regrouping and attacking protesters indiscriminately.

The department went into reactive mode after the seventeenth, adopting an even more aggressive posture at subsequent protests and keeping close tabs on demonstrations.

On July 24, a few hours before she approved the request, Stratton was one of several recipients of an email from a mayoral aide that included a screenshot from Twitter of a flyer about the Columbus Statue. The message was one of the thousands of hacked emails from mayoral staffers that Lucy Parsons Labs published online in April.

“IT’S GOING DOWN!” the flyer declares, announcing a rally in Grant Park the evening of the twenty-fourth. “We demand the PERMANENT removal of the Columbus Statue.”

ILLUSTRATION BY ELLEN HAO

There may be no connection. But a flyer—or “literature,” in the language of CPD directives—such as the one sent to Stratton would be the kind of evidence that would require a First Amendment Worksheet in order to open an investigation, according to a departmental directive.

Several demonstrations took place in Chicago on July 25, the date of the investigation listed on the worksheet.

Good Kids MadCity held a Love March against gun violence on the West Side.

In the Loop, anti-Trump protesters marched from the Federal Plaza to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office. That afternoon, Black Lives Matter demonstrators and a pro-police “Back the Blue” rally both gathered in Grant Park near the site of the previous week’s confrontation—now without the statue, which Lightfoot had ordered removed the night before.

The July 25 Black Lives Matter demonstration in Grant Park could have been the public gathering that Stratton approved covert surveillance of. We don’t know for certain which demonstration the police spied on because the worksheet is redacted. The question of why the department’s senior external relationsadvisor was involved in approving such an investigation remains unanswered.

“The City fought against continuing a long-time consent decree that curtailed this unlawful spying, claiming that the City would never again engage in such behavior,” Choudhury said. “The people of Chicago deserve more than a redacted worksheet to ensure that current police investigations into protests are not just an effort to continue such unlawful and abusive spying.” Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor. He last reported on emails that revealed Mayor Lightfoot’s backroom efforts to maintain qualified immunity.

JUNE 24, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

The High Price of the City's Shows of Force

Idling trucks ahead of protests in April drained half of Streets and Sanitation’s overtime budget for the year.

BY JIM DALEY

T

he Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation spent $3.87 million on overtime in April, more than half the amount budgeted for the entire year. Most of it paid City workers to sit in hundreds of trucks in anticipation of possible protests of police killings of Black and Brown people in Chicago and Minneapolis. About ninety percent of that month’s overtime went to truck drivers and truck supervisors.

On April 1, the department was already over budget on overtime. Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s 2021 budget had allocated $7.36 million to Streets and Sanitation for overtime this year. Heavy snowfall in January and February cost a combined $11 million, and April’s staging of trucks across Chicago to defend against civil unrest that never materialized pushed overtime spending to nearly $15 million.

The mayor’s fears of Chicagoans 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 24, 2021

ILLUSTRATION BY ZAHID KHALIL

reacting to police killings of Adam Toledo, George Floyd, and Daunte Wright led her to mobilize an army of City workers.

The Chicago Police Department (CPD) also preemptively switched to twelvehour shifts and canceled days off in anticipation of protests.

The Weekly obtained records of April overtime hours and pay from the Department of Streets and Sanitation via a Freedom of Information Act request, and has similarly acquired data on police overtime as part of a months-long investigation of the CPD. The documents reveal a blizzard of overtime that accumulated over an eleven-day period that saw mild weather and no looting.

P

aying drivers to sit in trucks across Chicago for days on end made April the fourth-most expensive month for Streets and Sanitation in terms of overtime in at least five years. The top

three also occurred within the last year.

In August 2020, the department spent $4.2 million on overtime when the City similarly deployed trucks during the summer’s uprisings against police violence and racism.

In January and February 2021, the department spent $4.68 million and $6.39 million on overtime, respectively.

January had 21.9 inches of snow, and February had 21.6 inches. Meanwhile, April 2021 had only a light dusting of snow on the twentieth.

Three events that month caused Lightfoot, fearing a repeat of last year’s rebellions, to mobilize the sanitation trucks and the police. On April 11, a police officer in Brooklyn Center, a suburb of Minneapolis, shot and killed Daunte Wright, a twenty-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop. On the fifteenth, Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) released body-

worn camera footage of CPD officer Eric Stillman’s deadly shooting of thirteenyear-old Adam Toledo. And on April 20, a Minneapolis jury returned a verdict in the murder trial of former police officer Derrick Chauvin, who killed George Floyd in May 2020.

A deluge of overtime began on the twelfth and continued through the twenty-second. During that period, sanitation workers earned 21,685 hours of overtime, eighty-seven percent of which went to truck drivers and their supervisors.

The eleven days during which trucks idled around the City accounted for more than seventy percent of the overtime sanitation workers accrued in April. Streets and Sanitation’s April 2021 overtime was seven times higher than the previous five Aprils’ average.

At a press conference ahead of the Chauvin verdict, Lightfoot said 300

POLITICS

garbage trucks, snowplows, and water trucks were being deployed to protect commercial districts. “Don’t test us, because we are ready,” the mayor warned Chicagoans.

Chauvin was found guilty. There were zero riots and no civil unrest in Chicago. The trucks idled for days near commercial and retail corridors anyway.

That deployment resulted in the month’s highest single-day accumulation of overtime: sanitation workers clocked 3,340 hours of it, eighty-five percent of which went to truck drivers and their foremen, on April 20.

I

n addition to sanitation workers, police officers also saw a flood of overtime hours when the department canceled days off and switched to twelvehour shifts to guard retail corridors and the Loop from looting that never occurred.

According to the data the Weekly obtained from the department, CPD amassed 171,018 hours of overtime during the first three weeks of April.

More than half of those hours—some ninety thousand—were coded as being related to a protest or civil unrest. Despite the City’s posturing, there was no civil unrest that month.

The 2021 budget overview listed continuing “to develop and implement workforce management improvements with a focus on identifying processes that mitigate overtime costs across the City” among this year’s initiatives. In her budget address last October, Lightfoot said, “We also will continue to hold the line on overtime.”

At least through April, the mayor appeared to have forgotten that promise. ¬

This reporting was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor. He last reported on hacked emails that revealed Mayor Lightfoot’s backroom efforts to maintain qualified immunity.

JUNE 24, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

HEALTH

Chicago’s Vaccine Disparity Widens

An update on Chicago’s vaccination efforts.

BY CHARMAINE RUNES

N

ow that the City’s campaign to vaccinate highly vulnerable communities has ended, what progress was made in reducing the vaccination gap between Protect Chicago Plus community areas and the citywide average?

An analysis by the Weekly shows that the gap between targeted ZIP codes and the rest of the city has actually increased over time. That is, the Protect Chicago Plus program fell short of its stated goal to “get these communities at or above the citywide vaccination rate.”

In January, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) announced an initiative called Protect Chicago Plus to prioritize fifteen of the most vulnerable neighborhoods, mostly in Black and brown communities on the South and West sides, for critical COVID-19 vaccines. These neighborhoods were: West Englewood, Gage Park, North Lawndale, Chicago Lawn, Englewood, Roseland, Archer Heights, Washington Heights, Austin, Montclare, South Deering, Belmont Cragin, Humboldt Park, La Villita, and Back of the Yards.

That same week, South Side Weekly launched ChiVaxBot, a daily Twitter bot highlighting the geographic disparities between who was dying from COVID-19 and who is fully vaccinated.

On February 25, a month after Protect Chicago Plus had launched, the city average for fully vaccinated people was 5.9 percent, while the average across Protect Chicago Plus ZIP codes was 2.9 percent—a gap of three percentage points.

However, by May 25, as vaccine supply improved, the gap had grown to eight percentage points, with the citywide average at forty-one percent and the 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 24, 2021

Protect Chicago Plus average at thirtythree percent.

What’s more, complete vaccine rates continued to vary geographically: from 90 percent in the 60603 ZIP code in the Loop, to twenty-three percent in 60621 in Englewood, a Protect Chicago Plus target area. And vaccination rates in other Protect Chicago Plus ZIP codes are still far behind the rest of the city.

Even though the percentage of fully immune residents across all ZIP codes is rising, the daily Twitter maps that ChiVaxBot posted have not appeared to change much, causing some confusion— that’s because despite the increase in vaccination rates across the city, the disparity between the South and West Sides and the rest of the city remains.

After nearly five months of reporting who is dying from and who has been fully vaccinated for COVID-19, we’ve decided to update the bot to also illustrate change over time. Starting next week, we will be threading a second daily tweet that shows a GIF (an animated graphic) of fully vaccinated residents by ZIP code, and how the percentage has changed week by week.

The maps below illustrate what this GIF might look like if we were to watch vaccination rates month to month: the darker the pink, the lower the complete vaccination rate; and the darker the green, the higher the complete vaccination rate.

On February 25, a month after Protect Chicago Plus launched, fewer than ten percent of most ZIP codes’ residents were fully vaccinated. A month later, wealthier ZIP codes on the North Side—as well as in Hyde Park, Beverly, Morgan Park, Mount Greenwood, Garfield Ridge, and Clearing—were in the ten to twenty percent fully vaccinated range, while the rest of Chicago remained under ten percent.

ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID ALVORADO

Towards the end of April, the percent of fully vaccinated residents in many South and West Side ZIP codes had improved, but were still far behind areas on the Far North Side and in the Loop.

The first ZIP codes to pass the fifty percent fully vaccinated mark were in Lakeview and near the Loop, but less than a third of residents in South Side neighborhoods like Englewood and Riverdale were fully vaccinated.

We hope that this clarifies that vaccination rates in several neighborhoods are in fact increasing, while still keeping

an eye on the divide between the South and West Sides and the rest of the city.

With the program officially over, the city is using their mobile vaccination bus to make immunizations more accessible to four South and West Side neighborhoods.

As of press time, the bus is stationed in South Shore on Wednesdays, Englewood and Roseland on Thursdays, and Austin on Fridays; and will offer either a singledose Johnson & Johnson vaccine or a two-doze Pfizer vaccine. Anyone over the age of twelve is eligible—no appointment necessary.

In early June, CDPH announced

HEALTH door-to-door canvassing plans to increase their hyperlocal vaccine outreach. The City are focusing on the following thirteen communities to start, many of which were a part of the initial Protect Chicago Plus efforts: Auburn Gresham, Austin, Chatham, East Garfield Park, Englewood, Hegewisch, Montclare, Riverdale, Roseland, South Deering,

South Shore, West Englewood, and West Garfield Park. Canvassing teams will visit every home in each of these neighborhoods to promote and facilitate vaccination; they will share information about nearby vaccination sites and events, as well as identifying seniors and others who might need at-home vaccinations.

As Chicago reopens and masking

and social distancing guidelines loosen, increasing vaccination rates and closing the vaccination gap between the two Chicagos will be even more important.

For updates on both, you can follow @ChiVaxBot on Twitter. For more information on local and pop-up vaccination events, you can visit the City’s vaccine event calendar on their website.¬

Charmaine Runes is the Weekly’s director of fact checking and a recent graduate of the University of Chicago’s Computational Analysis and Public Policy program. She last wrote about Black running groups on the South Side.

JUNE 24, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

HEALTH

Critical Care

Access to healthcare in Englewood was hard before the pandemic, and residents say it’s only gotten worse.

BY YVONNE KRUMREY

“B

y the time they call you back, it’s too late,” says Englewood resident Evelyn Varner from a Zoom square, as sixteen Englewood women, members of Saint Benedict the African Catholic Church, gathered online for their thrice-weekly “COVID in the Hood” call. Varner is sharing her frustrations with telehealth-care.

Since March of last year, this group of parishioners has used the virtual gatherings to exchange information about the virus, ask for prayer circles for friends and family, and simply share space together. Without much opportunity to see their doctors, these women rely on their collective knowledge to navigate the risks and fears of the pandemic. Some have their cameras on, others’ are off, but it’s clear that all of these mostly older women know their way around a Zoom call by now.

The space is sometimes also used to condemn the myriad ways the parishioners feel their neighborhood has been neglected by the City, before and during the pandemic. “It’s inequity,” said Jo Ann Allen, another parishioner.

Englewood is one of the most undervaccinated neighborhoods in Chicago, while having one of the highest COVID-19 death rates. Low access to health care and higher rates of illness than the rest of the city aren’t new trends in the neighborhood.

Rates of asthma, diabetes, HIV, and lung cancer in Englewood are significantly higher than the average in Chicago. Those four illnesses increase 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 24, 2021

the chance of severe cases and dying from COVID-19; meanwhile, getting treatment has for many people been more difficult during the pandemic.

Other disparities in rates of disease and access to healthcare, also exacerbated by the pandemic, exist in Englewood as well. Low birthweight in newborns is more than fifty percent higher than Chicago as a whole, and the infant mortality rate is nearly three times as high in Englewood as in Chicago. Infection rates for STIs like gonorrhea, HIV, and chlamydia are all nearly twice the citywide rate. High levels of poverty and violence paired with health disparities leave Englewood with an average life expectancy of seventy years, compared to seventy-seven years in Chicago as a whole.

Melissa Salgado-Bellin, Heartland Alliance Health’s primary care nurse manager at Heartland Alliance Health’s Englewood location on the corner of Garfield Boulevard and Halsted Street, attributes the community’s high rates of chronic conditions partly to the fact that residents prioritize urgent needs over long-standing health risks and preventative care.

“We definitely have people coming in with very complex needs,” SalgadoBellin said. A patient may come in with uncontrolled diabetes or hypertension, for example, but “at that moment, the person’s focus is housing or acute mental health concerns.” Such pressing needs and crises have only increased during the pandemic, as people deal with lost or

reduced income, mental health stressors and other difficulties.

“I have to look at patients where they’re at and address what is important in their life in the moment,” SalgadoBellin said.

Many Chicagoans spent the last year in a state of emergency, struggling to both avoid getting COVID and pay rent, making it even harder to focus on routine health needs.

Missing check-ups and health screenings more than usual could lead to worsening chronic conditions and unchecked spread of contagious diseases.

Varner, of the Saint Benedict Zoom call, had to postpone a heart stent surgery this year, though she has now completed the procedure. Other women on the call said they have not seen their doctors since last spring.

“We’ve noticed a rise in STIs and substance abuse,” Salgado-Bellin said.

Lack of stable health insurance, limited services, inadequate access to transportation, and inflexible working hours prevented some Englewood residents from receiving regular healthcare before COVID hit the area. The pandemic lockdowns, safety considerations, restrictions, and move to remote health appointments made all of these factors worse for many residents seeking care.

Salgado-Bellin said that Heartland Health Alliance often serves people who are uninsured, but “people do avoid coming in because they are afraid of costs.” Often a referral to the ER will be

refused due to the lack of health insurance access. 20th Ward Alderperson Jeanette Taylor said residents are fearful of being saddled with medical debt.

“Folks who are already struggling don’t go to the hospital. They can’t afford to pay their bill,” Taylor said.

Englewood residents who contracted COVID may face crushing medical bills, even if they have insurance and especially if they lack it. And people who delayed treatment for other conditions during the pandemic may see even higher medical costs, if delayed care causes those conditions to worsen and require treatment.

The pandemic has coincided with a decline of Englewood’s already substandard array of healthcare facilities.

When St. Bernard Hospital closed its OB-GYN unit in 2020, only four delivery centers remained on the South Side as a whole. Mercy Hospital in nearby Bronzeville narrowly avoided closure in March when it was sold to a Michigan-based healthcare system. The seven pharmacies in Englewood are also overwhelmed. Varner described the line for the 63rd Street Walgreens as “out the door” most days, with one person at the counter serving more than a dozen customers. Social distancing measures and the staggering of workers only contributed to this congestion.

Allen has seen pharmacies in Englewood, like a CVS that used to be on 69th Street, shutter. “They’ve closed things up over the years and never replaced them.”

HEALTH

“Folks who are already struggling don’t go to the hospital. They can’t afford to pay their bill.”

GRAPHS BY ZIHAN WANG

Telehealth increasingly replaced faceto-face healthcare during the pandemic, and even with the pandemic’s easing, that trend is likely to remain. This also presents challenges for many Englewood residents, who face a significant digital divide.

While telehealth appointments could be a solution to missing appointments because of childcare or lack of transportation, it doesn’t help when one doesn’t have convenient and affordable internet access.

As of last summer, almost half of

Englewood homes lacked an internet connection. Many residents reported having difficulty getting their children through the school day remotely for that reason.

A Chicago Public Schools program called Chicago Connected aims to connect students and families with internet access at no cost through July 2024; 40,000 students citywide have been enrolled so far, but much need remains.

“They just haven’t wired our community for it,” Taylor said. For Taylor, the lack of internet connectivity

in Englewood is another example of the ways her neighborhood often seems like a different city than much of Chicago, and how the City doesn’t support Englewood residents.

And even those with internet access may not feel comfortable with online care. “I’m not fond of seeing a doctor in that format,” said Englewood resident Candyce Tines during the “COVID in the Hood” virtual meeting. Varner, who described herself as an Englewood “lifer” in her eighties, agreed. “They aren’t able to take vitals over the phone or internet,” she said. “I don’t like that impersonal way to see the doctor.”

To compensate for the widespread lack of residential internet access, Heartland Alliance offers patients tablets on-site to connect with their medical providers—who weren’t in the building because of the pandemic—over Zoom.

The clinic plans to continue telehealth services for the foreseeable future, hoping to help any patients who do find online appointments easier than in-person visits.

Many in-person services are also being offered again.

Getting appointments for the COVID-19 vaccine has been a challenge even for Chicagoans with high-speed WiFi and smartphones, so it’s been especially difficult for those who lack such access.

“It was hard to navigate the technology even for people who are technologically literate,” said Lauren Albani, a volunteer with the group Chicago Vaccine Angels. “To get an appointment required refreshing all night.”

Chicago Vaccine Angels collaborated with the South Side-based My Block My Hood My City to help residents in

Englewood and other neighborhoods get vaccine appointments and transportation to them.

Albani has worked with Oak Street Health’s Englewood clinic to bring as many residents to vaccines as possible, and vice versa. These organizations aim to prevent future COVID infections, so that the virus doesn’t become another longterm issue that plagues the neighborhood disproportionately.

The ladies of Saint Benedict the African continue asking each other for tips to convince the last remaining skeptics in their families to get vaccinated.

They also work to keep each other safe as the church transitions to in-person mass.

“I don’t know why people think that after mass is over it’s okay to get together after the service and talk,” she said. “You know Father has a basket of sticks, and the sticks are to remind people to stay apart. When I see people congregating, I go over and gently remind them, ‘I’m going to get my stick.’”

The women of the congregation know the health-related and other challenges created and exacerbated by the pandemic will be with them even long after they’re able to ditch their masks and the basket of sticks. But they will be there for each other.

“You are your brother’s keeper,” Varner said. This story was reported in partnership with the Metro Media Lab, a project of the Medill School at Northwestern University, supported by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Yvonne Krumrey is a freelance writer based in Chicago. She covers environmental and equity issues. This is her first article for the Weekly.

JUNE 24, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

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South Shore’s Fight for Food As the City looks beyond the pandemic, residents of South Shore say there’s a long way to go to address food insecurity.

O

n a Saturday afternoon in late May, a volunteer in a bright pink shirt gently asks a woman passing by a South Shore church, “Are you here for food?” The woman nods in response to the question, then approaches the table set up on the sidewalk outside the basement doors.

Inside, volunteers wipe sweat from their brows as they work in assemblyline fashion to pack cardboard boxes with food. First come the dry goods: beans, canned vegetables, peanut butter, and pasta. Next, the meat, yogurt and cheese are added. Then it’s out the door to the sidewalk and into the hands of people coming to the Windsor Park Lutheran Church food pantry, which is open twice a week to the public.

It all takes place under the watchful eye of Joyce Gittens, who floats around the pantry with a motherly sort of attentiveness. She deftly navigates the church and greets everyone by name, volunteers and clients alike.

Gittens, who’s sixty-six, has been a member of the church on 76th Street for forty-five years. She’s a seasoned pro at keeping the pantry running and, as she put it, “making sure that we know our brothers and sisters are fed.”

But even she had never seen anything like the last 15 months.

When stay-at-home orders went into effect in March 2020 in an attempt to stave off the spread of COVID-19, Gittens and her team at the Windsor Park pantry saw an immediate and significant increase in the number of people in need of the help they offer. Almost overnight they went from serving around one hundred families a week to serving as many as 600 families weekly from the 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 24, 2021

BY COURTNEY KUEPPERS immediate South Shore community and well beyond.

Gittens said a long line often wrapped around the corner. “That was a devastating time for our neighbors and I mean not just for our neighbors, but for all of us,” Gittens said. “Every one of us who rely on the food pantry.”

South Shore has experienced significant disinvestment over several decades. That meant a lack of adequate access to food, especially for residents without transportation, even before the pandemic. In a report identifying “high-priority communities,” the Greater Chicago Food Depository notes that South Shore and the other neighborhoods on the list have experienced longstanding “structural violence, racism, and other social and economic disadvantages that cause food insecurity as well as poor health outcomes.”

When the pandemic set in, those pre-existing inequities meant that South Shore was among the neighborhoods in the city that saw the greatest number of infections and deaths from COVID-19, as well as high numbers of unemployment.

According to a Food Depository report from last August, forty-three percent of people living in South Shore were at risk of food insecurity.

According to data from the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University cited in a Food Depository report, more than thirty-six percent of Black households with children and nearly twenty-eight percent of Latino households with children in the Chicagoland area experienced food insecurity from September 2020 to February 2021.

“Though we saw a dramatic increase

in need across the network, there's no question that lower-income Black and brown communities on the South and West sides were the hardest hit, both by COVID-19, and the rise in food insecurity,” said Food Depository spokesman Greg Trotter. “And a lot of that has to do with years of disinvestment

and systemic racism.”

The Food Depository responded to the increased need with pop-up food distribution events and grants for community partners like Windsor Park church. The need in South Shore also attracted the attention of City Hall and efforts like the mayor’s Racial Equity

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Rapid Response Team, which provided supplies like masks and hand sanitizer.

But now, as the City phases into its post-pandemic period, Gittens said she’s worried the needs of South Shore will slip off the radar before the community has adequate time to not only recover to pre-pandemic “normal,” but also to address the root issues the pandemic laid bare.

“People are still hurting, we are still in a pandemic. A lot of people are still unemployed and don't have money. I think the only way people will keep their eye on it and continue to work on this is if we continue to let our representatives know,” said Gittens. “If you’re not talking about it, if you’re not meeting about it, if you’re not coming together to discuss it, it’s going to be hidden and we’re going to

be right back where we were.”

Residents in South Shore have long fought for equitable food access. In 2019, they got a win when a grocery store, Local Market Foods, opened its doors on 71st Street, six years after the last grocer in South Shore shuttered. However, some residents say the new store alone was not enough to address the need in the neighborhood.

JOYCE GITTENS HELPS OUT WITH WINDSOR PARK LUTHERAN CHURCH FOOD PANTRY AND GARDEN. PHOTO BY COURTNEY KUEPPERS

“People are still hurting, we are still in a pandemic.

A lot of people are still unemployed and don't have money. I think the only way people will keep their eye on it and continue to work on this is if we continue to let our representatives know.”

“There was a lot of fanfare when it opened, people were really excited,” said Al Walker, a South Shore resident who helps run Windsor Park church’s community garden. “But I mean, it's got the prices of a Mariano's or a Whole Foods when it doesn't really even have a better quality than the Jewel, but it's more pricey than Jewel.”

Gittens said that the cost barrier means residents are often left to get groceries from a dollar store or gas station, which lack fresh produce and healthy options. That’s something South Shore resident Yvette Moyo has been working on in the community for years. Moyo, who heads Real Men Charities, tries to raise awareness about the importance of nutritious diets. But she said she’s worried the pandemic has made it impossible for people to provide their kids with “highquality foods.”

“If you go into one of these area grocery stores, the first thing you see is just sugar, sugar, sugar,” she said. “And you’re not seeing any fresh food, so I think the need is great and the [need for] education is great.”

Moyo’s organization began inviting kids in the neighborhood to have breakfast at the Quarry Event Center on 75th Street. Over the course of seven months, she said they served about 250 meals per week. Real Men Charities also partnered with the Food Depository last year to do pop-up food distribution events in South Shore.

“People lined up in cars and with shopping carts down for blocks, waiting for the food to be distributed. Because you know, people lost their jobs and their kids were at home. Kids that were getting breakfasts at school were eating breakfast at home and were at home all day,” Moyo said. “And you know that refrigerator does not stop opening. When you have kids, there's not enough milk, not enough juice, there's not enough anything.”

Moyo said she tried to infuse a sense of optimism into the events by playing empowering music like Lou Rawls and Curtis Mayfield. She wanted people to know they weren’t alone and that there wasn’t shame in coming out to get food.

JUNE 24, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

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“While people are standing in line they’re not there with, like, a tin cup waiting— they’re dancing, happy and grateful to receive the food,” she said.

However, the logistics of running such events is complex and not sustainable, which is why they are exclusively part of the depository’s emergency response program, Trotter said. Now the distribution events are over and the focus has shifted to long-term solutions.

“We reach out and we find out who are the stakeholders, who are the key people in those communities, because we don't want us telling the community what they need, we want to partner and for them to tell us what their needs are,” said Paula McGuire-Rowe, the manager of partner engagement for the Food Depository.

Gittens sees that need at the South Shore food pantry she helps to run.

When demand kept rising, the church received a capacity-building grant from the Food Depositoryfor $75,000, which allowed them to open their doors an additional day every week. In addition to their Saturday hours, the pantry is also now open on Tuesday afternoons, which Gittens said they will keep doing as long as the demand is there.

The grant also gave the pantry the ability to build a walk-in cooler to store more perishable items, pay the volunteers a stipend, and expand youth programming in the community garden.

On Saturdays, Gittens often spends time working in the garden after the pantry closes. The green space, which sits kitty-corner from the church, provides some fresh produce to the pantry; goods like okra, celery, squash, watermelon and lettuce. It’s grown significantly over the years, said Walker, the head gardener, who is quick to excitedly point out the butterflies and bumble bees buzzing around. For Walker the space is really about providing an opportunity for kids in the neighborhood, especially after they spent so much time at home amid the pandemic.

Walker, fifty-two, grew up in South Shore and remembers a thriving 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 24, 2021

neighborhood with youth centers and all sorts of clubs and activities, like 4H, Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts.

“Now it's hard to find any of that stuff,” he said. “And so if we can just provide a little bit of extracurricular activity for the young people to have as they're growing up to increase their life experience, that’s a motivating factor.”

People like Walker, Moyo, and Gittens are on the frontlines of reminding people what their community once was and what they want to see it become.

But Gittens said the gap in services in the neighborhood makes people feel like they aren’t valued or cared for by the City as a whole.

“We need services in the community.

We don't even have a clinic in the immediate community,” Gittens said.

“We need food service, we need social services, we need medical health care services, we need housing. There are so many services that we need right now in the South Shore community.”

She knows it’s hard for people to keep going when they feel like no one is listening, which is why Gittens said she’d like to see a forum established where residents can speak directly to elected officials about what they have been through and what they need. She said politicians need to know what it’s been like. Even as the pandemic wanes there will be long-lasting impacts and challenges, not to mention the needs and inequities that existed beforehand.

Gittens has started to see the line get shorter at the food pantry every week, but she knows there’s “a long way to go.” As she walks to the church doors from the garden, residents greet her. “I’ll be right with you,” she says. “Be right there.” This story was reported in partnership with the Metro Media Lab, a project of the Medill School at Northwestern University, supported by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Courtney Kueppers is a Chicago-based journalist and graduate student at Northwestern University. This is her first piece for the Weekly.

Space to Breathe La Villita residents were left with little access to green space during COVID— right when they needed it most.

BY ESTER WELLS AND MARIE MENDOZA

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lie Amador lives on Trumbull Avenue. She’s the oldest of eight.

Now twenty-four years old, she grew up playing on the swings in Limas Park and running around on the grass. But her younger siblings don’t do the same.

“It’s no longer a park in our eyes,” she said. “My little sisters and my little brothers have never swung on the swings the way that I did. It's definitely the closest community space around, but it's absolutely not a community space.”

On the corner of Trumbull and 24th Street, the park is small, sandwiched between buildings and less than half an acre in size. Over the past year, the

Chicago Police Department reported twelve incidents of crime on just that one block, the majority of them involving battery and/or handgun charges.

So a block away, Amador’s backyard has become the street’s makeshift park instead. The neighborhood children come regularly to play behind Amador’s house in the temporary respite offered by the “Park of Trumbull.”

With just one percent of the neighborhood constituting open space according to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, La Villita has the lowest amount of green space per capita in the city of Chicago.

SERGIO RUIZ IS A FOOD JUSTICE ORGANIZER WITH LVEJO. PHOTO BY COURTNEY KUEPPERS

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And for its residents, this lack of access to green space became especially acute over the past year, as parks became a critical resource for meeting safely with others, getting out of the house and engaging in what little in-person interaction was possible during the pandemic. La Villita was hit especially hard during the pandemic, with some of the highest infection and death rates in the city.

Gang violence, high crime rates, air pollution, and tensions with police mean even the small amount of green space that exists in La Villita is not always safely usable. In the first five months of 2021, there were 72 shootings in Chicago’s 10th District, which includes La Villita and North Lawndale, up forty-seven percent from the same period last year.

Already strained relations with police came to a head in March when CPD officer Eric Stillman shot and killed thirteen-year-old Adam Toledo—seven blocks away from Limas Park. Many in the community, still grieving Toledo’s loss, have grown even more distrustful of police.

“My three little brothers, I always felt like they wouldn’t be vulnerable until they started looking like big men, looking a little bit scarier,” Amador said. “What happened with Adam made me realize it doesn't really matter what age they are.”

As concerns about safety and physical health intersected with racial tensions, economic hardship, and social isolation during COVID, mental health has taken a hit nationwide. Symptoms of depression in adults in the U.S. were three times more prevalent during the pandemic than before the pandemic, and people with lower income — like many in predominantly Mexican and Mexican-American La Villita, where the median household income is just over $30,000 — were at higher risk of developing mental health symptoms, according to a 2020 public health study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Youth in particular have been sharply impacted. Not only have children in Chicago, like the Amador siblings, spent

less in-person time with friends during the pandemic, but seventy-three percent also spent less time outside, and fifty percent got less physical exercise, according to a child health report by Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute. The report noted that Chicago’s white youth were the least likely to experience a decrease in time spent outside compared to youth of color.

Jadhira Sanchez, senior director of community health at Enlace Chicago, said that while access to green space became more important than ever for mental health during the pandemic, concerns about violence and safety outside have parents, and older siblings like Amador, keeping their children and family members indoors.

“Our parents don’t want to let their kids out of their sight because they don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “They don’t know when the next

[shooting] is going to be or when there’s going to be a drive-by. It feels like we’re incarcerating our youth, like you're in jail in your own home.” or Modesto Dagante, a small plot of land along Troy Street is a place of solace after work. On hot evenings in late May, he heads to the community garden Semillas de Justicia and waters his rows of tomatoes and cucumbers just beginning to push up through the dirt in neat rows. It’s here, he said, where he’s able to unwind each day.

Dagante’s plot is one of about forty, each marked with a sign bearing the name of its gardener. A decade ago, the 1.5-acre community garden — now home to fruits, vegetables and flowers — was a bare plot of land that released a strong oil smell whenever it rained or got hot. Residents pushed for answers.

They soon discovered that oil barrels were

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being deposited just below the surface.

The Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) spearheaded a campaign to redevelop the brownfield site, resulting in a much needed gathering area for the neighborhood, said Sergio Ruiz, the garden’s coordinator.

“It’s not only a green space, but also a safe space,” said Ruiz, twenty, a food justice organizer with LVEJO. LVEJO views the fight for environmental justice as encompassing a range of interconnected systemic issues, including police accountability, antiviolence and food security. Meanwhile, many of their campaigns target the pollution and industry that puts residents at greater risk of disease from simply breathing the air.

Local residents played a key role in forcing the closure of the Crawford Generating Station in 2012 and in

JUNE 24, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

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“We have a relationship with land as Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

I think it's important for folks to understand that you can't keep people from these spaces. They're going he lack of green space means see that with our young people rising up to lose their minds if you keep La Villita residents, especially and being leaders in our community,” she people, also have limited said. “In some ways, we do feel like we are them from touching the Earth.” access toyoungorganized outdoor activities our own saviors.” demanding accountability from the city after the coal plant was demolished last year, coating the neighborhood in plumes of toxic dust in the midst of the pandemic.

LVEJO has forced city leaders to give them a seat at the table as planning decisions are made about the city’s future.

They relentlessly oppose proposals that would increase local air pollution and make being outside even riskier, while also advocating for more green space.

LVEJO Executive Director Kim Wasserman emphasized that the importance of green space in La Villita goes beyond coping with the pandemic.

The need is constant, and ties into cultural identity.

“We have a relationship with land as Mexicans and Mexican Americans,” Wasserman said. “I think it's important for folks to understand that you can't keep people from these spaces. They're going to lose their minds if you keep them from touching the Earth.”

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 24, 2021

The lack of green space was exacerbated as area parks shut down during the pandemic. The neighborhood’s largest park, La Villita Park, opened in 2014. Spanning almost twenty-two acres, it’s the product of a fifteen-year fight by LVEJO to convert the once toxic industrial grounds into a place for residents to skate, play soccer, climb on playground equipment, and safely spend time outdoors.

When La Villita Park closed at the beginning of the pandemic, residents lost their biggest green space—and one of the only, other than Piotrowski Park on 31st Street and pocket parks like Limas.

LVEJO, too, erred on the side of caution and decided to close Semillas de Justicia temporarily. Ruiz said the decision was hard on the community.

“It impacted [people] a lot because this was like their escape, to destress and come out here and have a spot other than just work and home,” Ruiz said. “When we closed it down, everyone was like, ‘What can we still do to organize? What can we still do to see each other?’ The need was still there.”

The scarcity of green space in the community—and the lack of coherent city-wide guidance on safe use of parks during the pandemic—meant it was essentially up to local groups like the La Villita Park Advisory Council and LVEJO to create COVID-19 guidelines for both the garden and La Villita Park, said Wasserman. The organization worked quickly to educate residents and facilitate a safe reopening.

“We recognized that so many people were going to the park because they needed to get out of their houses,” Wasserman said. “Sheltering in place is hard in our community, where there are six to eight people in people's homes.”

T

and group sports. These team-building opportunities are crucial to mental health and development.

New Life Centers of Chicagoland offers sports programming and mentorship for youth in Little Village and surrounding areas. Ivan Alvarado, whose parents helped with outreach to the community through Little Village's New Life Community Church, helps run their newly created soccer program.

After years playing and traveling with a professional soccer club in the Costa Rican Second Division, Alvarado returned home eager to give back.

“The first week we had one kid show up for my soccer practice,” he said.

“The next week, we had five kids. The next week, we had ten. It just grew by five every week, and was amazing to see.

These kids in Little Village have so much potential. Some of them are better than guys I played with at a professional level.

They could be doing amazing things, but there's just no resources for them.”

For Alvarado, the sports program is more than just soccer practice. It’s a resource to create community, foster hope and give youth with little access to outdoor recreation a place to grow.

“No one said it was going to be easy to stay home for months,” he said. “But you know what? We want kids to know that we're here for them. We want to listen, and we’re interested in what they want and desire.”

Amador, too, wants to see the youth thrive and wants to help however she can. She is working as an administrative coordinator at New Life Centers’ Pan de Vida food pantry, and says she celebrates the small victories but knows there’s more work to be done on both the ground and policy levels.

“Little differences we’re making are bringing generational changes, and we

Diana Franco is one of those young people. Now twenty, she has participated, led and coached in New Life programs since she was thirteen. She now works with Amador as one of the directors at the food pantry. Some of the outdoor spaces Franco accessed most as a student were the green areas around Little Village Lawndale High School, where it’s not so much the violence but the sickly smells from industrial emissions that often keep young people inside.

Working with New Life Centers now, she said, is her way of being part of the effort to improve living conditions for years to come.

“To us, it was normal” to live amidst reeking, noxious pollution, she said. “But it shouldn’t be normal. Me and my child in the future should not be inhaling [industrial emissions] just being outside. … This community is beautiful.” Courtney Kueppers and Yvonne Krumrey contributed to this story.

This story was reported in partnership with the Metro Media Lab, a project of the Medill School at Northwestern University, supported by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Ester Wells is a graduate student at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She received her bachelor's degree in journalism and political science at Northwestern in 2021. She is now working as a reporting fellow at Politico. This is their first piece for the Weekly.

Marie Mendoza is a Chicago-based audio producer. She's a graduate of Northwestern University, Medill School of journalism, where she got her start in radio at WNUR 89.3 FM. This is their first piece for the Weekly.

Introducing our new section editors!

Arts Isabel Nieves @ilniev

Immigration Alma Campos @alma_campos

Community Organizing

Housing Malik Jackson @malik__x

Chima Ikoro @supernaira

Education Madeleine Parrish @maddieparrish61

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

‘What Is a Holiday Compared to a Life?’

Young Chicagoans respond to Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday.

BY CHIMA IKORO

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n Thursday, June 17, President Joe Biden signed a bill that officially recognizes Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker followed suit, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the City would recognize the holiday next year.

While this seems like an attempt to empower and show respect to Black Americans, it’s come off as performative to many members of the community despite Black activists outlining very clear and tangible demands to create safer environments and resources.

Last summer, while protestors were being violently attacked by the police, lawmakers across the country and in the nation's capitol had “Black Lives Matter” murals painted on the street instead of giving actionable responses to demands for police accountability. Young Black Chicagoans who shared their perspectives on the first “official” Juneteenth with the Weekly expressed some disdain for the federal recognition of the holiday. But Black people all over the city still celebrated— because folks have never needed permission to gather.

Chima Ikoro is the Weekly’s community building/organizing editor.

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 24, 2021

CHRIS JAMES (HE/HIM), TWENTY-TWO, EAST WASHINGTON HEIGHTS “I feel like Juneteenth being recognized is a liberating moment that could be used for us to freely celebrate without harm or harassment, which we know is not always the case when it is time for us to congregate.

“I do feel, however, that the [recognition] of Juneteenth as well as other implementations that have been made, such as no longer calling the syrup company Aunt Jemima or TV stations no longer allowing white actors to voice Black cartoons, is performative. There is still a lot of work to be done before we start seeing real change.”

“What does real change look like to you?” I asked. He starts a list: “Police accountability, defunding the police. Resources in our communities such as fresh produce. Workshops for young Black mothers who may not know how to prepare homemade meals.

Mental health facilities...so many other things…”

TEIANA “ANAIET” DAVIS (SHE/THEY), TWENTY-ONE, ASHBURN “Ahh...where to start?” Teiana ponders. “It’s obviously pretty bittersweet. Here you have a holiday based off the premise that white people kept Black people enslaved for two entire years, or more...after they were supposedly ‘emancipated,’ she said, “yet the 13th amendment is still rock solid in the Constitution with no chance of being amended or abolished any time soon.” The 13th amendment states that slavery is outlawed with the exception of one condition: as punishment for crime. Some activists call for the 13th Amendment to be rewritten because folks who are incarcerated should not be subject to involuntary servitude.

Teiana also details that Juneteenth is somehow made into a federal holiday while simultaneously being banned from curriculums in fifteen different states in 2021, “which is really wild...considering how far we’ve supposedly come.”

“Freedom,” she said, “What exactly is that when you’re dealing with the same [nonsense] from hundreds of years ago in a new, modern context? It feels like, ‘lets just give them a little something cute, and make them think that’s what they actually want so we don’t have to do the actual legwork.’”

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

DAMAYANTI WALLACE (SHE/HER), TWENTY, WOODLAWN Damayanti, who has been organizing for years, feels similarly. “I think it’s very performative,” she starts. “It has happened before, right? We’ve seen holidays recognizing our struggle as Black and brown people with no actual policy change.” Damayanti also references how the 13th amendment hasn’t been abolished, as well as the curriculum ban previously mentioned. “They learned

nothing from last summer and from our years of fighting. What is a holiday compared to a life? People are dying, like, who cares about a day off from work when our people are consistently dying in the streets?”

“Who do you think the recognition of this holiday benefits?”

I asked her.

“It benefits capitalism and people who benefit from capitalism. This is to make money, like, we obviously saw that this weekend with the colors and the sales from various companies.”`

“What is a holiday compared to a life? People He speculates that “none of that money is gonna go into A’JA PROPHET (HE/THEY), the community or into the people that are actually celebrating SEVENTEEN, BRONZEVILLE are dying ... this holiday.”

I asked A’Ja if he were to write the Juneteenth bill, what & HYDE PARK who cares would it say?

“Defunding police on a national scale could have been the “Aight, so boom,” A’Ja starts, “Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday is performative activism at it’s... highest… government first thing that was done. And then allocating all of the funding about a day that goes toward police and military toward mental health capacity.”

“It just feels so, like, out of everything you coulda’ did, services, and then, like, food and housing programs.... Free off from work that should have been done, this one? ‘Cause it’s also just an school, things of that nature that people actually need.” excuse for the government and companies to capitalize off of when our Juneteenth.” people are consistently dying in the streets.” state policing, obviously the demands for the arrests have been CHINA SMITH (THEY/SHE), NINETEEN, GREATER GRAND CROSSING & ENGLEWOOD

“I feel like...we were just given the absolute bare minimum. I feel like it was pretty pointless. I feel like our other demands, our immediate demands for justice, for other things in our community were more, and this was done to be like ‘hey, solidarity.’”

I asked China about what demands they feel have been ignored.

“After every single murder that’s been at the hands of

ignored,” they began. “I personally am a [prison] abolitionist, so I don’t give no fuck, but I still feel like the voice of the people, people who look like us is important, and this is shit that we’ve been demanding. Things like more resources in our schools because we all know the effects of slavery, racism... it still affect us to this day.

“To think about how Chicago is still segregated as a city and how you go from neighborhood to neighborhood and see these differences, it starts in our neighborhoods, like, our every day. Why are our streets still fucked up? Why are our schools… underfunded? It starts with what we can see.” ¬

JUNE 24, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

Black People Have Never Needed Permission to Gather PHOTOGRAPHY BY THOUGHTPOET

A PAINTER WORKS ON A MURAL AT THE DUSABLE MUSEUM’S JUNETEENTH 2021 REOPENING EVENT.

THE HERCHICAGO TEAM, INCLUDING ALYSON GODBOLT, IMARI WILSON, AND JORIE BEACON, POSE FOR A PHOTO AT THE BREATHING ROOM’S JUNETEENTH 2021 EVENT

DAMON WILLIAMS AND HIS NEPHEW AT THE BREATHING ROOM IN BACK OF THE YARDS.

COMMUNITY HEALER NAJEE-ZAID SEARCY GROOVES AT THE DUSABLE EVENT.

DANCERS AT THE DUSABLE JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION.

PICTURED: MURJAN ABDULLAH, MOHAMMAD ABDULLAH, AND LOCAL ACTORS COURTESY OF SOHIB BOUNDAOUI, DIRECTOR OF ARABICA

‘The Only Place in the World that I Actually Feel at Home’ A conversation with Sohib Boundaoui and the cast of the Little Palestine web series Arabica

E

ver since grassroots movements like #OscarsSoWhite and #BlackLivesMatter gained mainstream traction, BIPOC people have become better represented—a bit— on both the big and small screen. But though these days you can find movies and shows about Black, Latinx, and AAPI characters in your Netflix queue, fictional shows about Indigenous Americans, Arab, and/or Muslim Americans are still severely underrepresented.

Enter writer and director Sohib Boundaoui and his web series Arabica.

Arabica takes place in the southwestern Chicago suburb of Bridgeview, in an insular Arab Muslim enclave nicknamed Little Palestine. In the show, Boundaoui plays himself, a filmmaker trying to get his neighbors to talk about the FBI for a documentary.

In many ways Arabica is a natural sequel to the documentary The Feeling

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 24, 2021

BY FRANCISCO RAMÍREZ PINEDO

of Being Watched, which was created and directed by Boundaoui’s sister, journalist Assia Boundaoui, and which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018. The documentary followed her real-life attempt to uncover the covert FBI operation dubbed Operation Vulgar Betrayal. Through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and a lengthy court battle, Assia unearthed a wide-ranging, decades-long FBI probe of the residents of Little Palestine, which resulted in over 30,000 pages of records on the community’s residents. The probe resulted in only one charge: Abu Ahmed (known to the press as Muhammad Salah) was the first American to be designated a terrorist for allegedly funding Hamas, a charge of which he was later acquitted. The FBI is still slowly releasing its records to Assia Boundaoui.

Where The Feeling of Being Watched takes a journalistic approach, Arabica

employs artistic license to tell the stories of a rotating cast of members, all of whom use their real names and many of whom are non-actors involved in the community. Arabica touches on subjects like race, gender, religion, and creative ambition.

Though each episode follows a different protagonist, there is one character that is a constant in each: a white van that is widely believed by the community to belong to the FBI, a callback to the Boundaoui’s family involvement in exposing Operation Vulgar Betrayal.

The following is an excerpt from a longer conversation with Sohib and Assia Boundaoui, along with actors and producers, about the making of the film, the most recent Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and what it’s like to live as a firstgeneration Arab/Muslim American in Little Palestine. You can hear the

full interview on South Side Weekly’s Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/ south-side-weekly-radio. Arabica is online at arabicaseries.com.

Sohib Boundaoui (writer/director): I feel like this whole project was a long time coming for the community. Everybody felt so strongly that their perspective is unique and making this it was hard to focus on one specific subject; I feel like it was the right thing to try to get as many voices in as possible, because the nuances of our community are so diverse. That there is no one Little Palestine, or one Arab, or one Muslim story. I was born and raised in Little Palestine. Me and Baha (producer) grew up [together] and we all went to the same Muslim private Islamic school. Assia, my older sister, was doing The Feeling of Being Watched for five years, and she’s been my mentor in this process.

I feel like it’s been a gradual experience

STAGE & SCREEN

FOREGROUND: SOHIB BOUNDAOUI. BACKGROUND: ISMAIL MUSA TAHER COURTESY OF SOHIB BOUNDAOUI, DIRECTOR OF ARABICA

“It’s been a process of learning what the arts can do for our community, and seeking that investment in the community in the arts. I’m just a conduit.

I’m just shining a light on the amazing people that are around us.”

seeing how our community fits into the arts because it wasn’t the first instinct of the community. The community is STEM-based—you know, doctor, lawyer.

I mentioned in the series that the instinct is to survive, to get acquainted, and I feel like now we’re in this part as the first generation that can really use the resources around us to tell our story. It’s been a process of learning what the arts can do for our community, and seeking that investment in the community in the arts. I’m just a conduit. I’m just shining a light on the amazing people that are around us. And now we’re in such a formal setting. It’s been such a grassroots

DIY process that it’s great to be speaking about it in retrospect, seeing what can come about in the future.

mix of all of that and showcases so much of the talent and the personality of folks in the community.

one of his verses on another song and he put it over a UDMG track and it fit beautifully.

Assia Boundaoui (executive producer): I’m really honored to play a small role in this project. And, I just really want to uplift what Sohib just said: so much of the film really is showcasing a lot of the talent that we have in our community. We have talented folks like Mona (Aburmishan) who are in entertainment and have been doing this for a while, and then we have the folks at the barbershop who actually work there and are not so much acting.

So I love this series, because it’s really a

Was all the music featured in Arabica done by local artists?

Because of FBI surveillance, have you felt that paranoia of someone always watching you? Always observing you?

SB: My cousin—shout out to UDMG, the co-owner of a music group—a lot of music was from him, from some beats to actual tracks, also big brother Kayem and my teacher Ronnie Malley and also my friend Bilal Shouly. Between them four, who are all Arab-American musicians, they supplied the whole soundtrack for the show. And Amin Elsaeed. He took

SB: It’s not just the FBI; paranoia would be a natural thing in a community that is always thinking about what other people are thinking about them, you know what I mean? This is a community that struggles with but also perpetuates the feeling of being watched and judged, so a part of it is like people are looking at you. So it’s JUNE 24, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

STAGE & SCREEN two interesting levels of paranoia, where you’re navigating state surveillance, but also your community’s expectations or their image of you. I feel like everyone in the series kind of had this looking-overyour-shoulder type feeling like people are watching or something is watching.

Baha Amra (producer): One example of that in the series is actually, if you remember when Arti walks into the barbershop and all the guys are just staring at her. That was one one example where the community’s watching some community member. One of the scenes that didn’t make the cut was a bunch of—we call them khaltos, which is like aunties—where they would just peek out of the blinds and then look and keep a watch on the neighborhood just to see what’s going on.

Amin Elsaeed (actor): I think that at least within the Muslim and Arab community, whether you know you’re being actively watched or not, you always think that you are, and so that really is what kind of guides a lot of people’s actions. And it’s like, “Man, what are they going to think of this? What if someone sees this?

What are they going to say about me here?” Baha brought up the scene of Arti just walking into the barbershop. Within

the Arab Muslim community, a woman walking into a barbershop like that?

That’s a big deal. A lot of women won’t just walk into a barbershop by themselves that’s full of a bunch of guys. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but just the cultural expectations and that feeling of constantly being judged. That’s something that’s so ingrained in our community that I think it’s going to take some generations for us to kind of let that free from our mindset.

Were the events in the most recent Palestinian-Israeli crisis felt in Little Palestine?

BA: Yeah, it was definitely felt. I’m Palestinian and I’ve never even been to Palestine. But you couldn’t even go from person to person without talking about what’s happening between Palestine and Israel. I mean, it’s an injustice that’s happening right before our eyes and obviously, there are now a lot of eyes on it, and a lot of people are saying stuff about it, but the the fact that the global governments are not doing anything about it is what’s sad and what needs to change, and they actually have to have something be done about it because, what’s going on? It’s just straight up genocide.

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Mona Aburmishan (actor): Many of us have lost family members because of what’s going on. We’re holding our breath and we’ve been doing that for so long. My camera guy—he has a family in Gaza. He lost a cousin. I did a show with another comedian in Dubai, and I’m like, “Dude? How’s it going over there? I’m surprised you got out.” And losing a whole neighborhood, a whole block of building, you’re losing your social capital and it affects every community. But the diaspora has been for so long and so strong, we get that punch, but we’re all still vacillating between mourning and not. I don’t know if I could have believed in myself enough as a Palestinian to execute what [Sohib] executed in this project. You’re seeing it through some of the healing. A lot of Palestinians often can’t see beyond what could be possible because we’re always in a state of occupation. Everyone else goes and learns about history about “that one time.” In South Africa I talk about “that one time,” but we’re in that one time, so sometimes it really can affect your mental wellness knowing half of you is under duress all the time and getting the calls about it.

Cai Thomas (executive producer): The release ultimately got pushed back multiple times and one of the reasons was because [Sohib] didn’t want to release it while everything was going on. He’s thoughtful and caring. It’s like, this is

Scan for SSW Radio's full interview

not the time to be putting out a series, everyone [is] in the streets right now, this is where the focus of the community is going to be and there will be a time where the project can come out. But as his friend who knows how hard he worked on this, editing eight episodes, directing eight episodes, writing them—that is a lot.

SB: I feel like I’m working as glue and just bringing in the right people in the right place together at the right time to talk about a certain thing. And that was the goal with the documentary, to inspire a conversation about who we are, because once we understand ourselves, we understand where we fit and how we could grow as a group. I feel like this is just another iteration of that. This is a piece of who we are and this is a piece of what’s possible from production and producing art to understanding ourselves and our role in this context. Our ancestors took us to this place and for me, I think it’s very interesting that, for hundreds of years, my people were in the mountains of Algeria, and now I’m in Chicago, so it’s like, what wisdom have I attained from my ancestors that lived in Algeria that now the context is to put it out in Chicago?

I feel like a part of that is giving people a chance to shine. Amin, I always said, it’s just a matter of time till he becomes famous, because he’s just extremely talented. Mona, it was incredible how we just literally connected and the next time I met her, she was acting on this series. So much of that happened over the community. The first time I met Cai, she’s like, “Chicago, we need to talk.” That was the only thing she said and then we had a long conversation after that. It’s just giving shine to these beautiful souls around us that deserve to be seen. It’s been awesome and I’m looking forward to doing it again and again and on higher and higher levels moving forward, Inshallah. God willing. Francisco Ramírez Pinedo is a freelance web developer and contributing editor for the Weekly based in South Chicago covering labor, tech/cybersecurity, politics, immigration, arts, and design. He last wrote about Pullman and South Chicago for Best of the South Side.

24 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 24, 2021

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BULLETIN East Side Pride Rally and Parade Meet at E. 100th St. & S. Indianapolis Ave., Friday, June 25, 5pm, Free.

Sponsored by Bridges // Puentes: Justice Collective of the Southeast, this bike, car, and foot parade includes speeches by LGBTQ+ youth and artists and an allages afterparty at Crowbar. Route TBD. (Martha Bayne)

Chicago Advisory Redistricting Commission Chinatown Public Hearing Union Church’s Impact Center, 2301 S. Wentworth Ave., Saturday, June 26, 2:30pm. Free.

The Chicago Advisory Redistricting Commission is holding a series of public hearings to help redraw the boundaries of Chicago’s fifty wards. They are seeking input from community members to ensure that a fair and representative map is drawn. Members of the public can sign up to testify in person or remotely at bit.ly/june26hearing.

(Maddie Parrish)

Building Community and Identity: Asian American Youth Summit

Monday, June 28-Wednesday, June 30, 1-5:30pm, Virtual, Free. Sign up at bit.ly/ CBCACyouthsummit Join other young, Asian American activists, community organizers, and storytellers to uplift Asian American communities through art, policy change, and grassroots community work. Come ready to discuss topics such as: building support networks, destigmatizing mental health through an Asian American lens, and navigating complex, intersectional identities! This is open to all AAPI and non-AAPI high schoolers.

(Maddie Parrish)

Father's March 2021 Ogden Park, 6500 S. Racine St.; Saturday, July 3, 1-4pm. Free.

Mr. Dad’s Fathers Club, founded by Joseph Williams to foster positive male role models for kids, hosts a march and rally for peace and unity in their community. Free food, DJ, games, and raffles. ( Jackie Serrato)

LIT Author Marisel Vera

Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave, Wednesday, June 30, 6pm, Free. Virtual event. Register at semcoop.com

26 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 24, 2021

The Humboldt Park-born and -raised author reads from her novel The Taste of Sugar, set in Puerto Rico on the cusp of the Spanish-American War, and discusses the impact of colonialism on Puerto Ricans both on the island and in the diaspora. In conversation with her daughter, Chicago theater maker and culture worker Alysa Vera Ramos.

Presented in partnership with the Chicago Public Library. (Martha Bayne)

MUSIC Noche de guitarra mexicana La Pulqueria Restaurant, 2501 S. Western Ave.; Fridays 7-10:30pm. Free.

Bohemian nights with Pilsen guitarist Ernesto Piadoza. Mexican ballads, rock, and folk songs.( Jackie Serrato)

Pilsen Unplugged 1756 W. 19th St., Saturday, June 26, 6-10PM. $6 for music in back. @ thepilsenarthouse Pilsen Unplugged returns at the Pilsen Art House! This event will feature music

by Hannah Sandoz, The Even Years, and Amelia Harlovic. Inside there will be art and food from Freedom Market.

(Isabel Nieves)

Chicha Roots at Navy Pier Navy Pier Beer Garden, 700 E. Grand Ave., Sunday, June 27, 2pm-4:30pm. Free.

Chicha Roots is a psychedelic, Amazonian and chicha cumbia band.

Their repertoire consists of classic songs from bands from the golden age of Peruvian cumbia. Based in Chicago, the band includes musicians from countries like Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. ( Jackie Serrato)

VISUAL ARTS The Long Day: 2021 MFA Thesis Exhibition Logan Center Gallery, 915 E. 60th St., Thursday-Friday, June 24-25, 1-8pm, Saturday, June 26, 12-6pm. Free. RSVP for timed entry at https://bit.ly/3gLe137 The University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts and Logan Center Exhibitions present an exhibition featuring works by Anton Auth, Mercedes Cardenas, Alana Ferguson, Sara Grose, Vincent Haynes, Max Li, Nico Pliskin and Danielle Wright.

(Malik Jackson)

EVENTS

Hyde Park Flea at Hyde Park Art Center Hyde Park Art Center parking lot, 5020 S. Cornell, Saturday, June 26, 12-4pm, Free.

The Hyde Park Art Center is partnering with Gilda’s Designer Thrift Boutique for their outdoor Hyde Park Flea. From 12-4pm in the parking lot of the Hyde Park Art Center, you can shop for items from vendors offering vintage fashion, art, furniture, jewelry, and antiques.

(Maddie Parrish)

Michelle Obama Virtual Conversation Art Institute of Chicago; Wednesday, June 30, 5pm. Free. Virtual event. Register at bit.ly/3gfkYrJ Former First Lady Michelle Obama joins artist Amy Sherald for a powerful conversation on the significance of the “Obama Portraits” tour opening in Chicago, the importance of representation in the arts, and the process of creating the portrait of Mrs. Obama. Their conversation will be moderated by Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem. ( Jackie Serrato)

Just Above My Wall, (To The Right) Exhibit South Side Community Art Center, 3831 S. Michigan Ave., May 1-June 30, Free.

RSVP for socially distanced viewing at bit.ly/justabovemywall “Just Above My Wall, (To The Right)” is curated by Ciera Alyse McKissick and showcases Black contemporary artwork from thirteen emerging and established Black art collectors from Chicago. RSVP for a socially distanced viewing at bit.ly/justabovemywall. (Maddie Parrish)

National Museum of Mexican Art Reopening Day National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St., Thursday, July 1, 10am-6pm, Free.See nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org

The National Museum of Mexican Art is reopening to the public at 10am on July 1. Exhibits will include “Adláteres and the Unexpected Journey,” work from Yollocalli Arts Reach, and “Nuestras Historias: Stories of Mexican Identity from the Permanent Collection.”

(Maddie Parrish)

Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave., 4th Fl. June 19-October 3. Adult tickets $15. Free admission for people under eighteen. mcachicago.org/ Exhibitions/2021/Chicago-Comics-1960sTo-Now Over forty cartoonists with Chicago ties are represented in an exhibition that explores the ways that comics are used not only to entertain readers, but to engage them in the relevant social and political issues of their time. The exhibit is divided into four sections spanning Chicago comics history, including 19601970s: The Underground; 1980-1990s: Alternative Weeklies, Comic Books, and Zines; 1990-2000s: Graphic Novels and Community; and 2010-Now: Chicago Rising. ( Jackie Serrato)

Frida Kahlo: Timeless Cleve Carney Museum of Art at the College of DuPage, 425 Fawell Blvd, Glen Ellyn; June 5-September 6, 10am-6:30pm.

Admission $23. See theccma.org/fridakahlo for more.

A comprehensive presentation of the life and works of the world-renowned artist Frida Kahlo will feature twentysix original artworks from a Mexico City collection, as well as an immersive historical exhibit at the McAninch Arts Center with Kahlo’s favorite plants and more than 100 photographs. ( Jackie Serrato)

HOUSING A Roundtable Discussion: Architecture and Black Lives Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell; Thursday, July 8, 6-8pm, Free. Register bit.ly/3iZ5VFG This discussion brings together artists and scholars to meditate on the ways Black people have found to commune and the architectures that they must navigate. With a particular focus on Chicago spaces, it investigates how we can conceive of architectural forms that affirm Black life with Adrienne Brown, the interim director of the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life program, and author of Black Skyscraper; Mario Gooden, author of Darkspace, and architect and artist Amanda Williams.

(Malik Jackson)

Chicago Tenants Movement: South Hub Tenant Organizing Meeting Tuesday, June 29 from 6-7pm (Online) Regular collective meeting for tenants organizing buildings on the South Side of Chicago, to get questions answered and advise on campaigns. Register at bit.ly/ctm-s-hub. (Malik Jackson)

IMMIGRATION Citizenship Workshop Instituto del Progreso Latino, 2520 S. Western Ave., Saturday, July 10 at 10am, Free. Register by calling 224-548-0833

FOOD & LAND 61st Street Market 6100 S. Blackstone Ave.; Saturdays, 9am–2pm. Free. (773) 241-6044. experimentalstation.org/market Chicagoland farmers, cheesemakers, bakers and others hawk their wares every Saturday outside the Experimental Station. The market accepts LINK and Senior Farmers Market Coupons, and all LINK purchases are matched up to $25.

(Martha Bayne)

Hyde Park Farmers Market 5400 S Lake Park Ave.; Sundays, 9-1pm.

Free.

Hyde Park opened a brand new farmers market on June 13 presented by the South East Chicago Commission.

(Maddie Parrish)

Pilsen Vendor Market 1756 W. 19th St.; Sundays, 12-5pm.

The Pilsen Vendor Market is a weekly event at the Pilsen Art House featuring local artists and makers in an indoor and outdoor space. (Isabel Nieves)

Scan to view the calendar online!

Former congressman Luis Gutierrez and the Frida Community Organization will be hosting a citizenship workshop.

Applicants must be legal permanent residents for at least five years to qualify or have been married to a US citizen for three years. Organizers ask that those interested register soon since there is limited application availability. See a full list of requirements before attending: bit.ly/3gLt7FX (Alma Campos) JUNE 24, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 27