SSW 09.07.16 - Interview Issue

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ SEPTEMBER 7, 2016

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

Editor-in-Chief Jake Bittle Managing Editors Maha Ahmed, Christian Belanger Director of Staff Support Ellie Mejía Director of Writer Development Mari Cohen Deputy Editor Olivia Stovicek Senior Editor Emeline Posner Education Editor Lit Editor Music Editor Stage & Screen Editor Visual Arts Editor

Hafsa Razi Sarah Claypoole Austin Brown Julia Aizuss Corinne Butta

Contributing Editors Joe Andrews, Eleonora Edreva, Andrew Koski,

Lewis Page, Sammie Spector, Carrie Smith Video Editor Lucia Ahrensdorf Radio Producer Maira Khwaja Web Editor Camila Cuesta Social Media Editors Sierra Cheatham, Emily Lipstein, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Layout Editors Baci Weiler, Sofia Wyetzner Staff Writers: Olivia Adams, Maddie Anderson, Sara Cohen, Christopher Good, Anne Li, Emiliano Burr di Mauro, Zoe Makoul, Sonia Schlesinger, Darren Wan Staff Photographers: Juliet Eldred, Finn Jubak, Alexander Pizzirani, Julie Wu Staff Illustrators: Javier Suarez, Addie Barron, Jean Cochrane, Lexi Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu, Zelda Galewsky, Seonhyung Kim Social Media Intern

Ross Robinson

Webmasters Alex Mueller, Sofia Wyetzner Publisher

Harry Backlund

The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. 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 art by Turtel Onli

IN CHICAGO

A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors

Off Principle Former Blaine Elementary principal Troy LaRaviere formally handed in his resignation on August 30, ending a challenge to his April dismissal from the top-rated North Side school. LaRaviere had been accused of “dereliction of duty, ethics violations of state and CPS policy, and insubordination” by the district, possibly due to his outspoken criticism of CPS policies and his participation in the campaigns of both Chuy Garcia and Bernie Sanders. In a public letter announcing his resignation, LaRaviere explained that he had been contesting his dismissal “on principle” although he could not have served as principal of Blaine Elementary once the school year started, due to his election as the president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association (CPAA.) Now, with his administrative hearing a month away, Blaine Elementary could not appoint a permanent principal without LaRaviere’s resignation. So, Blaine will get a new principal, and CPS will get to close the book on a rather unflattering chapter for the district. But, as the head of the CPAA, it seems that LaRaviere is just getting started.

The Road to Rhodes Avenue This week, the 31st Street bus is provisionally returning to urban life after nineteen years in the wilderness. In November, the CTA announced a six-month pilot program for the bus, which will run from the Ashland Orange Line station to Rhodes Avenue. If the route reaches the desired target of 830 rides per day, it will be permanently reinstated. But while the community organizations that lobbied for the return of this bus were initially elated, some activists suspect that the route has been “set up to fail.” Consider: the program didn’t begin until September, after Chicago’s beach season has largely ended; it will only run on weekdays from 10am–7pm, too late of a start for commuters or students; and the buses arrive every half hour, which activists say is too far apart. “It feels like a bit of a slap in the face,” Tom Gaulke, a Bridgeport pastor and community organizer, told DNAinfo. Meanwhile, there’s happier bus-related news further south: the city announced that six South Side bus routes would be altered to expand service. For instance, the 4 will now operate twenty blocks longer, down to 115th Street, and the 119 will run more frequently during midday and evening hours. That’s good for a part of the city still suffering from a dearth of public transit options, including a long-awaited extension to the Red Line.

Lead Astray It’s that time of year again: time to send the kids back to school. The air is ripe with the hallmark smells: the rubber of new gym shoes, the paper of new notebooks, and, of course, the lead of pencils. Unfortunately, students in two Pilsen schools—Pilsen Academy and Perez Elementary—might catch a whiff, or a taste, of the other, more insidious and far less healthy kind of lead. The two schools have tested positive for elevated levels of lead in their water, CPS reports. An area long plagued by environmental concerns—particularly lead contamination, which the EPA has been investigating in the area since 2011—Pilsen is once again poised to fight back against pollution. Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization, commonly known as PERRO, will host a meeting Tuesday at 6pm at Rudy Lozano Library. Dr. David Jacobs, health expert and research director at the National Center for Healthy Housing, will weigh in. New smart water meters and new service lines, says Troy Hernandez of PERRO, are likely goals.

THE INTERVIEW ISSUE policy in practice: theresa mah

“Because I have an awareness of that, I want to try and change it.” kristin lin.........................................4 breaking down the electric fence: monika neuland

“The arts are the fastest way to transfer resources. A song—didn’t cost me anything, didn’t cost your ears anything.” olivia stovicek..................................7 motivational training program: fred evans & bob valentine

“I always like the idea that I’m a child of God.” jake bittle.......................................11 an amazing school: jessica pope

“I don’t think you can walk this earth alone.” daniel kay hertz............................14 keeping the city safe: alicia tate-nadeau

“ You know, emergency management is all about people.” alex v. hernandez..........................16

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SEPTEMBER 7, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Policy in Practice

Theresa Mah on history, prejudice, and representing the 2nd District

BY KRISTIN LIN

T

heresa Mah spent the first part of her career studying history, but now she is on the cusp of making it. Mah will be running unopposed in this November’s general election to represent the 2nd District—which includes Chinatown, Bridgeport, and Pilsen— in the Illinois House of Representatives. If she wins, she will be the first-ever Asian American legislator in the Illinois General Assembly.

In this interview, the McKinley Park resident shares her thoughts about where she has been and where she is headed.

You come from two generations of US immigrants: Your grandfather was a paper son [a Chinese-born immigrant who obtained citizenship by using fraudulent documents], and your parents immigrated to the U.S. and are small business owners. What lessons have you learned from this as you’ve made your way through your public service career?

The main thing I learned is that communities, especially those that are oppressed, have to form coalitions and come together and help each other. There has to be some kind of mutual assistance mechanism to fight for the community’s rights. The community that I come from in San Francisco was able to fight for survival and advocate for the things they needed when they came together, [through] networks of family and district and surname associations. Those were the organizations that were necessary in order to ensure immigrant survival.

Especially [for] folks like my grandfather, who was a laborer and worked low-wage jobs. He was part of a wave of immigration that really wasn’t supposed to be in the United States. I grew up in that environ-

ment and saw my dad’s involvement [in these organizations], and that was a great example of civic engagement and community leadership from an early age. Learning about the immigrant experience was really important to me as well because, amazingly enough, here we are in 2016, and we’re still fighting for a lot of the same issues. The effort to ensure that people are able to live productive lives and earn a fair wage...and have an experience of justice and fairness— those are still things that we need to work on and fight about.

How do you think being Asian American today differs from being Asian American in previous generations?

I had the benefit of taking Asian American studies classes when I was at Berkeley, and so I know that we do have very different experiences today, compared to my grandfather’s days. Those were the days of outright racism, where people would get beaten and stoned on the streets. My dad would tell me about San Francisco’s Chinatown and how there were certain boundaries, like Broadway, where if the Chinese community ventured beyond those areas, there would be white ethnic gangs that would beat them up. [Asian Americans] don’t necessarily experience that on a widespread level today, but it’s important to understand that that was an experience that our forebears went through. There is perhaps a tendency in our community to embrace a model minority myth. But even though the racism against Asian Americans is not as blatant as [it was] a hundred years ago, it’s still there.

There are all kinds of egregious examples of racial injustice perpetrated against Afri-

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can Americans. We have to have an understanding of that and be a part of the fight against it.

What have you seen or experienced in terms of race relations between the Asian American and African American communities, and what are ways in which you plan to build solidarity in the neighborhoods that you represent?

Sometimes there are tensions, and there are

exacerbates the racism that already exists.

My hope is that we’re able to understand that we have more in common than we have differences. It has to be a unified approach to trying to address these structural problems in our society. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, but it’s just not that easy to get people to understand how to move forward on it. The efforts that I’ve seen, for example, of Asian Americans writing letters to their parents about Black Lives Matter. That’s important. We need

When a community grows dramatically, it becomes really clear when there’s no representation at any level in politics. People felt very strongly that they wanted somebody to represent them, to look like them, to understand their issues, the language. fears and misunderstandings. But as I said before, I think it’s important that we build relationships between the communities and make sure that we don’t do anything that

to support efforts like that to build understanding with the immigrant generation, or new immigrants who just arrived, and to get them to understand that there’s no way

POLITICS

about an incident that happened to him in Chinatown, where some thieves broke into his car and stole a significant amount of money. It seemed like an organized effort, where these two guys drove into a parking lot, and one was serving as a lookout and the other broke into his car and stole two cell phones and a good amount of money.

There happened to be surveillance video of that and it showed that it was two Chinese people. So I made a point of bringing that up to the Chinese media and at the Chinatown safety meeting—that our common assumption is that when there is criminal behavior, it’s always people outside of Chinatown coming in. And the assumption is that the criminals are always black. We let our guard down and we actually decrease our awareness and our public safety when we make those assumptions, because people who are involved in crime will come from all different backgrounds. I don’t think that I would necessarily have a problem speaking out about my support of immigration reform or supporting the black community and their efforts. Those are issues that the Chinese community doesn’t necessarily think of as relevant to them. But [they are], and I think that’s something that I can continue to remind them about whenever an opportunity arises.

LUKE WHITE

that being anti-black is going to get rid of racism.

crease lines of communication in your role as a representative?

How do you think you’ll be able to in-

Recently, one of my supporters told me

You’ve really prided your campaign in being able to bring out voters who have never even thought about engaging in politics. What issues have galvanized first time voters to start getting involved, and generally how have you encouraged first-time voters and typically apolitical constituents to get involved in community issues beyond voting?

The Chinese American population in my district has been growing steadily over the last 10–20 years. When a community grows that dramatically, it becomes really clear when there’s no representation at any level in politics. People felt very strongly that they wanted somebody to represent them, to look like them, to understand their issues, the language. And that was a huge motivating factor for a lot of these firsttime voters, who had become citizens but never saw the need to really vote because they didn’t’ have anybody who was like them. So I think just at a very simple level, having someone that they could relate to was really important for them.

And then over the years, I’ve been involved in community organizing efforts, [which were] really important too because it takes a lot to organize a community to push for a resource like a library and more recently the 31st Street bus [restored by the CTA for a pilot program this fall].

But when you finish with that or you have a successful campaign, there’s something there for you to show the community, and there’s a tangible accomplishment for them to look forward to. They can see the fruits of their own involvement.

Public education funding seems to be an issue that you care deeply about. In the past you’ve talked about reforming the way that K–12 schools are funded and moving away from the property tax model. You also voice support for increasing MAP funding for public universities like Chicago State. How do you plan to push these issues forward in a political environment that is as fraught as that of the

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POLITICS

LUKE WHITE

Illinois General Assembly?

The effort to redo the funding formula so that it relies less on property taxes is already something that is being worked on in the general assembly. There’s a bill by Senator Andy Manar that is trying to address those reforms. I will probably end up working with him on that. It’ll be a challenge...to come up with a formula that the majority of people can be satisfied with.

I’ll also be someone who is in support of changing our progressive tax structure so that working people don’t bear a disproportionate burden for bringing in the revenue that we need to support these programs and education. I think it’s time that we tried to work toward a more fair revenue system so that people who are wealthier pay their fair share. I talked a lot about that

during the campaign, and it’s something that I will continue to push in the legislature. It’s something that we’re going to hear more about because we do need to come up with some structural changes and revenue is a top priority because right now, we don’t have enough. It’s a struggle to serve the people we need to serve and to maintain the programs that are necessary, so we’re going to have to have some of these challenging conversations about where we bring in the revenue and how we allocate the money that we have so that we can support public education.

Your dissertation at University of Chicago was on housing segregation. How has your academic research influenced your jump to doing public service? How have you thought about your platform and

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steps moving forward?

Studying housing segregation was an important lesson in understanding the power of public policy and how it literally shaped this time that we live in. When I was working in Chinatown as a community advocate, I was able to get something done, but it became really clear that there’s a limit to what one can get done and how much change you’re able to effect. And so that eventually convinced me that I have to take this leap and run for office so that I could legitimately have a seat at the table and have a say in the decisions that are being made that affect our communities.

The funding formula for education [for example] is directly related to the history of housing segregation. The reason you have communities with low property values and

very low revenue from property taxes is because you have this whole period of white flight from urban areas. People moved out to the suburbs and left the central cities with very little population and areas that were economically devastated and a public school system that serviced mostly black and brown students. The legacy of housing segregation and racial inequality in this country that we see reflected in unequal funding to education that continues and is reinforced through public policy. Because I have an awareness of that, I want to try and change it.

People look at me and they see a Chinese American, and then they fill in whatever idea they have about what it means to be Asian American. But I think that my personal background is pretty unusual, and I grew up with a range of multiracial and multiethnic influences that are not that apparent unless you learn more about me.

I spent my childhood up until my teen years growing up in a black neighborhood and working in my family’s small business.

That was the experience that led me to look more closely at racial segregation and housing segregation. I’ve always been really focused on or interested in understanding the effects of racial inequality in our country’s history. And I’m committed in various ways to dismantle that…[and] to achieve greater equality for everyone. For me, what it means to be Asian American is to be committed to working in solidarity with other racial and ethnic groups to address issues of racial inequality in this country that we all experience, and that we all have a responsibility to work on and improve. ¬

VISUAL ARTS

Breaking Down the Electric Fence Monika Neuland on socially engaged art AS TOLD TO OLIVIA STOVICEK

I

grew up in Chicago; in my earliest years I grew up around Humboldt Park. It’s really funny, people ask me how did I come to work wherever it was—West Side, South Side. I was one of two Anglo kids in my school, so when people ask me about why I choose to work with diverse populations or whatever bizarre verbiage or politically correct verbiage du jour that there is floating around, I’m never sure how to really put that forward. The reality is I work with people that I grew up with, that are really to me the primary comfortable real everyday people. I guess as a white woman I’ve noticed people put this frame on me of, “Well, you’re this person working here, this is not the same.”

Monika Neuland is a social practice artist who uses weaving and textile art to engage

LUKE WHITE

with people and communities—mostly recently, the community of Hamilton Park in Englewood. Neuland’s experience facilitating art in Chicago parks goes back twenty years, but it was only last year that she connected with Hamilton Park during the Re:Center Project, which aims to increase participation in park Cultural Centers in a community-focused process. Since then, she’s worked on a variety of projects and spent time as artist in residence there, working with co-facilitators and local artists Celestine Carmichael, Andrew Kane, and Regina Wilson, clients of Envision Unlimited, a nonprofit that supports individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I listened raptly as she spun tales of her time at Hamilton, the quiet aha moments of her work, and climbing over and knocking down cultural “electric fences.”

We were Czech immigrants, we didn’t

speak that much English; I learned to speak English right as I was entering school. I started in first grade, and when I went to school I remember feeling like I’m a kid like anybody else going to school, and then starting to realize on those first few days of school that I understood the gist of what was going on. But there were real specific aspects where I knew that green was a color but I wasn’t sure which one. And so I think that, again, through this very weird sort of lens, I have a real visceral relationship with this idea of—I don’t really want to call it “other,” but of thinking or knowing that you’re part of a system, but at the same time realizing there’s something about you that doesn’t quite address what’s around you in the same way that everybody else does.

It’s a real cool little toolbox if you’re comfortable being uncomfortable or you’ve

toughed it out enough times to where you’re like, “Hey, I kind of know how to do this.”

You see how people stand, how people talk, you see what they’re eating, you really become an anthropologist at a really early age, studying the people around you and gathering a little data about what they’re doing.

And then at a certain point you start to either develop theories or [do] the “when in Rome.”

You do get these different keys, and people let you in if you don’t put up an electric fence between you and them. What really motivates my work and my history is that I was also very hyperaware growing up that everyone had these electric fences across the city.

Whether I judged them or knew what they were or why they were, as a young person that was not that relevant to me...I just

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

was aware that you would hear people say, “Don’t go there,” or “You’re riding the bus?

Don’t go down whatever street it is,” or “Oh, he’s from a bad neighborhood,” or “That’s a neighborhood in transition,” and you go, “Oookay.” We can find all these ways to state things in the most up-to-date acceptable way and really mask a lot of nonsense about the electric fence. This whole idea of the cultural electric fence has always been fascinating to me, and if anyone says to me, “Well, don’t go there,” I’m automatically going there. I wanna know, why shouldn’t I go there?

G

oing back to the community of people who have disabilities, why them?

Why have I worked so extensively with them? Why have they worked so extensively with me? It’s very interesting that disability is something that most people in some way, whether they’ll state it or not, are not always comfortable with. There might be a certain race or class of people that says, well, we don’t associate with so and so, or a certain race of people that says we’re weary of those people, they’re our neighbors and they’ve historically fought with us, or their religion is so different from ours, they’re heathens. You know, all this different black and white contrast-y stuff you can come up with. But even taking a person who is within the socio-political economic ethnic group in your neighborhood, and now you present people with disabilities to people within their group…there is a level of discomfort there, and that’s really interesting to me.

The community of people who are neurologically diverse…is represented everywhere. If you go into an African-American neighborhood, or into an Asian neighborhood, or into a rich neighborhood, lo and behold there is this one common thread that there are these groups of people who have disabilities, and they are largely historically experiencing a sequestered lifestyle through social service organizations that are, quote unquote, serving them, but we’ve still kind of put an electric fence around them. They

have been gracious enough to give me a passport into every neighborhood, because through working with this community…you see how people are the same and how people differ and yet how some of the rules that govern this particular reality defy all these other cultural rules, specifically this idea of “us” and “them.”

So it really was amazing—this summer I did an artist residency with this organization SWARM that’s very much about collective art making, collective experience, and I applied for the residency with four other cohorts, three of whom had a developmental

incidentally have a disability?” It was such a riot because we had one of our first events at the beginning of the residency, and one of the folks that worked at Hamilton came up to me and said, “You know, so, you said there was gonna be some people coming today,” dot dot dot, and I said yeah, and he said, “Well, are they coming?” And I looked around the room and I said, “They’re here.”

And that was all that was said. I don’t think that what he was saying was casting aspersion as much as it was that Hamilton Park has such a sense of welcome, and he was really anticipating, “Will they need some-

This is a sixteen-year-old kid who’s there for some sporting event, and he says, “Weaving is a real ancient tradition that links a lot of cultures.” And I’m like, “OK, young sporty dude.” disability, and we were accepted. It was just a riot to see by the end of the week how excited everybody was that they had had the opportunity to have a meaningful experience with other artists who had developmental disabilities How better do you provide access to people with developmental disabilities than by really being a welcoming host, really getting deep into it?

W

hen I got approached by the Chicago Parks District...they had said, you know, this person might be good to do this residency, and immediately again I said, “Can I co-teach with people I’ve been working with who are artists in the Englewood community who also

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thing from me? I might need to be receptive to them, because no one asked, ‘Are they a wheelchair user or can they see?’” I think when you say a sentence and the word disability’s in there, it’s almost as if disability is in a two point larger font. It’s not as if they’re hearing physical, mental, developmental; they just have a couple pictures that pop up.

It was in one of our meetings where I looked around and I was like yeah, dammit. This is going back to the WPA [Works Progress Administration] model, which I feel like is what the parks should be about.

It’s not casting aspersions to the parks in the past, but there was this dip where it really feels like recreational stuff and sports became what the parks were known for, and

much like schools started canceling their art and music programs and a lot of their applied craft, whether it’s even a word like “home economics,” these are things that got cut because there’s no money for the whole person anymore. And I saw that with this artist-in-residence program at Hamilton, it was a total wellspring of going back to this WPA model, which really at heart is about creating this reservoir that collects the wealth, the narrative wealth, the participatory wealth of a community.

And we had lost that container, that container just wasn’t around in the same way, and because of this incredibly democratic platform that the parks have—largely a free platform—it’s one of the very few places within the electric fence system where you can theoretically, and as I’ve seen it with the Re:Center process, with the parks’ artist-in-residency program, have an absolutely equal sense of services being delivered within these different neighborhoods, different cultures. And everyone pretends it’s [always] the same, but come on, it’s not the same.

Our public school system is linked to taxpayer dollars, so what crap are you talking?

So to see that there’s an institution there that is now having this renaissance, looking at the humanities as a way to bring that ethical humanist baseline to all communities… wow, cool, I can so get with that.

M

y work is so predicated on joy and discovery and this very everyday kind of wonder—there are not supernovas, but there are constant senses of aha or acknowledgment if it’s done correctly. But I think the exquisite misery, if there is one, in what I do, one of the huge aggravations for me being an artist working in social practice, primarily having selected to work with people who are neurologically diverse—and those people just happen to be usually experiencing poverty—is that people will say usually some garden variety of, “You’re just such a nice person,” or, “You have to be really patient.” I never know how to respond to that because someone’s trying

VISUAL ARTS

to give you a compliment as they see it, and I guess I see it as this huge assumption about who I am and who other people are.

I think I really enjoy practical solutions and seeing very boots-on-the-ground ways that things can work, and I think that some of my real reason for doing what I do is that I love to travel. And people don’t assume that five miles from where you live or ten miles from where you live is traveling, but specifically I think Chicago is really a phenomenal city in that way...if we go one mile in any direction here, we are in a completely different world.

LUKE WHITE

The agony is [also] that what people or the media says happens here or there is not the reality. A huge takeaway that I had from Hamilton Park—there was this one teenage boy who came in one afternoon when we were having residency, and he was hovering in the doorway, and I was all like, “Get in here!” And he said, “Well, you know, what are you guys doing?” And we were weaving, looking at looms, and first of all, he started to make all of these incredibly astute historic connections. This is a sixteen-year-old kid who’s there for some sporting event, and he says, “Weaving is a real ancient tradition

that links a lot of cultures.” And I’m like “OK, young sporty dude that was on the other side of the door.” So he’s talking to me for about five minutes, really brilliant, and then he stops himself and he says, “Oh! I’m so sorry! I haven’t introduced myself.”

So now we’re off the charts, not only are we brilliant, we’re also incredibly elegant. He says, “My name is Stephen. It’s so nice to meet you. I really appreciate that you let me come into this class. I’m here with a sibling, he’s attending a sporting event…”

And I’m just sitting here, like…“Can I take this to the six o’ clock news?” [Some people have] this cultural perception of “Oh, I can’t go there,” and this person was articulate, totally mannered to an extent that like most teenagers anywhere are not. And I’ll go tell my experience to someone, and they’ll smile and say, “You are such a nice person.” And you’re like, “I’d like to dump a pile of slop on you.”

I think the world would really profit from us taking these kind of risks—perceived risks—and when I have documented video of the most tender and soulful and shy young boys who are like holding this little vessel that they made or looking at this piece of thread that they’ve spun, to me, they’re everything that is tenderness and receptivity and care, and this is a nine-year-old young male African-American person, and three, four, five years from now they’re going to walk down the street and people are going to be like, “Here comes a potential threat.”

So a lot of the work as it’s emerging for me in social practice is that I’m realizing that I’m sitting on a wealth of information.

In my mind I create these installations where you have this scene of a shooting or some huge cultural disconnect and you bring these images or video, this documentation of these nine-year-old people, five-year old people, in all their glory, of this sixteen-yearold boy with the incredible manners and self-awareness and respect, and I just want to be like, “Hey, could you look at this?” I think it’s a circuit, and this is why it’s difficult, because it’s garbage in, garbage out, fear

in, fear out, respect and welcome in, respect and welcome right back at you. How do we put that circuit into a context that makes it user-friendly and makes it in a way this remedy that everyone’s looking for?

But even the idea of remedying a situation assumes that there’s this illness, and you see that in the disability community too, it’s like “Well, you can work with people that just aren’t right,” and it’s like, well, I think you have to go in everywhere thinking if this person’s neurology or their financial situation or their race or their incarceration history or their use history or whatever, it’s just an aspect of who they are but it in no way defines them or their capacity.

I think that working in social practice and so often encountering this poverty as an evidence of something is kind of how I see it, people are just like, “This community has poverty,” but it’s just an evidence of something. If you stand out in the sun for twelve hours you will get a sunburn. It’s just this result, and to flip it around, when you see people who have experienced this and we’re looking at them, other people look with this deficit mindset. If you’re not there, you don’t see the extreme amount of resourcefulness that’s being exercised within this situation of poverty to see that the poverty in fact is this membrane that has a lot of wealth consciousness and a lot of the ability to manifest. And that’s why I work in textiles, and repurposed textiles. Quilting, rag-weaving—it’s amazing because there isn’t a community that you go to that can’t come up with a whole bunch of rags.

The arts are the fastest way to transfer resources. A song—didn’t cost me anything, didn’t cost your ears anything. The visual arts often have the materials component, but also we don’t even need materials. It’s amazing when you just show up and you’re like, “Here we are.” ¬

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SPORTS

Motivational Training Program

Fred Evans and Bob Valentine on swimming, coaching, and dreaming

LUKE WHITE

BY JAKE BITTLE

F

red Evans is a swim coach at South Shore International College Prep, a selective enrollment school located on 75th and Jeffery. He has coached swimming in Chicago for over forty years, starting at Chicago State in 1974 and then moving on to Chicago South Swim Club, the first integrated swim team in the city. Before he was a coach, he swam at the collegiate level, where he became the first African-American national swimming champion in the United States. His daughter Ajá Evans was an Olympic bobsledder and his son Frederick Evans III played in the NFL for nine years.

I meet Fred and his friend Bob Valentine,

who also coaches at South Shore International, at the L&G Restaurant on 75th and Exchange.

They are both dressed in t-shirts and shorts, having just come from a morning swim practice.

Though they have coached in the same area for decades, and though Bob had always heard stories about “the legendary Fred Evans,” they only met five years ago, when Bob’s team came to Chicago State for an invitational.

For the first half of the interview, Bob drinks his coffee and listens. When the check comes, he grabs it and pays. “I finance this operation,” he says.

Fred, your team, the Chicago South Swim Club, was the first integrated swim team in the city.

FRED EVANS: I mean, I can go back with that program more than forty years and it’s always been that way. I think I got there the second year it was developed. Now I never looked at it that way, because when you’re in it, you just do it.

I always like the idea that I’m a child of God. I’m the oldest of four children, of Frederick and Dorothy Evans. And one day my mom was at the swimming pool with another

lady, and she saw that we liked playing in the pool, and she said, “There’s such a thing as a swim team.” And it was coed. At the time I was going to a grammar school for seventh and eighth grade, and it was all boys. And I was like, “Oh, good. Girls.” [Laughs] For me.

So, I mean, could I have done other sports? Yes. I tried out for football in my freshman year of high school. I was the second or third fastest guy in the school, running, and I got cut. And I said, “All right, I’ll do something else.” [Laughs] Then they asked me to play my junior or senior year, and I opted out. And I just kept swimming. Made

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

LUKE WHITE

All-American, went to the Nationals; I was the only guy with a tan there. I just had fun.

I needed a way to pay for school, so I got a scholarship. I wanted to go out to the West Coast, but my father had recently passed and I was the oldest of four children, so my mom said, “You need to be closer to home.” So I ended up in the Midwest. I grew up in Washington, D.C. So I’m a transplant.

What was it like, to be “the only guy with a tan”? And you went to internationals, too, right?

FRED: Yeah, yeah I did. People were pretty cool. And some were really, really mean. Did I hear someone use the word “n——”? Yes. Did it make me wanna fight ‘em? No. Was I upset? Yes. I thought there was more civility.

Certainly, I knew I was different. But for the most part, I was having fun.

So it didn’t make it harder—but it wasn’t a motivation for you? Or was it?

FRED: Oh, no, sometimes it would—often it

would be a motivation. I remember one time I was at the Nationals, it may have been my junior year. And this one guy said he was going to kick my ass. Literally! He and I [points at Bob], we still talk about it. And I didn’t say anything, but I ended up beating him and breaking the national record by two seconds.

[He held that record for four years.]

That’s always nice.

FRED: It is, it is.

How long did you swim for before you realized that you were really, really good?

FRED: Well, it depends on how you look at it. If you’re in the top ten in the whole United States, and you know that they only take the top two in my sport to the Olympics, is that “good”? You’re fourth? [Shrugs] But I knew I had gotten a scholarship; I knew I was traveling a lot, going around the country and other people were paying for it. I was getting an education for free, so I thought—I mean, I worked my tail off, four or five hours a day…

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ SEPTEMBER 7, 2016

that was a job! But I don’t know if I’d ever use the word, “good.” I’m not sure I ever used that.

But when you first started, was it just another sport? Or did you know, was there something different about it?

FRED: I was blessed. I was exposed to it. I had some wonderful coaches, a fantastic family, you know. I was having fun! And it was a sport...with girls! And I really want to emphasize that, because it really was a motivator. I didn’t know any other sports with girls.

And when I was in grammar school I had the most horrific experience in baseball. The coach was just horrible to me. I didn’t know anything or any better, but I was maybe in the sixth grade, and I knew that if the coaches were like that, I didn’t want to do that sport. I played soccer, ran a little track, played a little football…I don’t know how else to describe it. I had a good time.

Really, the thing was how blessed I felt I was, because when I “retired” and stayed here, it was almost a thing I felt compelled

to do spiritually—to coach. I mean, the coach that I had was fired. They were looking for another coach for the college and the age group program. I’m going to graduate school, getting ready to leave Chicago, going back to D.C., thinking I’m going to law school or something. In my mind, I was going to be the mayor. And they asked me to coach and I said, “I’ll do it for a year until you find somebody.” And apparently, I did it well enough that they stopped looking. And then I finished my degree and started a business with one of the professors, and I stayed in Chicago.

The business was called the Motivational Training Program. [The professor’s name was Frank O’Block, now deceased.] I started becoming fascinated with how important your mind is in competing. And it had a huge impression on me because I knew it made a difference, but it happened to be something I practiced with athletics, versus business or something else, and I wanted to try to accelerate performance. And the professor and I developed a strategy to do that, and we started doing it. It was kind of cool…I would call up [companies] and say, “Hey, I’m doing this thing with motivation, I think it has an impact. This is how much it costs, we’ll do a couple of days.” They’d say, “cool.” Then I’d call up somebody else. “Yeah, come on out.” A business called us, a city called us. So I got this idea of going back to school at University of Illinois to get a degree in sports psychology.

Got distracted, never finished a degree, but I did publish [a book]. I’m one of those guys that couldn’t stand regurgitating information in class, but I published.

So the motivational thinking that helped you in sports can be applied to other fields?

FRED: Absolutely.

What’s that process like?

FRED: Let’s do one with you. Tell me what time it is: the big hand of the clock is on the twelve, and the little hand is at a ninety-degree angle to the right. What time is it?

Three o’clock.

FRED: So you’re looking at the face of the clock. But if you’re looking at the clock from inside, it’s really nine. o’clock. And that’s like your type of motivation—intrinsic, extrinsic.

How are you motivated? Knowing that part can accelerate how I proceed to teach and

SPORTS

coach and manage whatever. [One of my swimmers], she couldn’t stand me as a coach.

She thought I had favorites, that I was mean to her specifically, and then as she got older she said that wasn’t the case. But at the time, they may think that but I’m only wanting the greatest thing that they can possibly do at that time. The greatest. And I see it inside of people all the time—their eagerness, their tenacity, their fear. Because a lot of people have fear of success. “Wow, I gotta be responsible now.” I know I’m talking all around the world here, but…coaching felt like a responsibility.

God blessed me, how dare I? And I tried to quit.

BOB VALENTINE: Which time? [Laughs] FRED: The first time, I had been coaching about twenty years, and I went into corporate America. Liked it. That was the first time I had only one job at a time in my entire life. It was pretty cool. Made a couple of companies, had a successful one, industry changed and it changed me. So I got back into swimming because I wasn’t looking to go there, but it came to me. I checked it out again, saw a team that was interested in a coach—“eh, I could do this.”

At one point I was training other colleges [and] they came to Chicago State to train with me. People traveled an hour to get to me—at the time, I didn’t know it was because of me. It was fun. They thought it was fun. But it’s a privilege to hear them talk about me, and to be alive and not dead. Because you know how people say things. I’m at the age when funerals become a regular event, and you have people telling these fabulous stories, and you hope they had shared that with the person while they were alive. So, I could die today, pleased that I’ve been able to get and have what I have.

Look, I know the premise here is to talk about swimming and my experience with the sport, and I’m humbled by that. I get recognition not because I was the best in the United States but because I was, quote unquote, the first African American collegiate national champion. Woo, that and two dollars will get you a cup of coffee. I got recognition for that, but more importantly it gave me a platform to be who I am, and continue to do what I like to do. Look at me. T-shirt, flip flops, and shorts on the South Side of Chicago. I even ride my bike in this stuff sometimes.

BOB: His recumbent bike. Low to the

ground. It’s a lowrider.

that’s a family I used to coach. I gotta say hi.

FRED: He’s predicting that, I’m not.

FRED: Well, I have a flag six feet up and I pay attention. I’m very defensive.

[He gets up and walks across the restaurant to talk to them for a minute. During this time, Bob shows me pictures of him being “chased” by a fake polar bear at the Peggy Notebaert Museum.

Eventually Fred returns and sits back down.]

BOB: But a good senile.

BOB: I would still run him over, though.

FRED: Well, like they say. “When you have friends like this, who needs enemies?” But Chicago State, then they changed it to Chicago South when they had to move it to another location. It was a fabulous experience for the kids, but I think it was an even greater one for me. I really wanted to see them thrive.

I tried to push them as hard as I could. They tried as hard as they could—some of them did, some of them didn’t, and they’ll tell me that now. But it was fun. Hard, tiring, frustrating, and beautiful, all at the same time.

You started coaching and you thought you

FRED: That was a family, I used to coach their children, and now their children have swimmers.

BOB: And he can go anywhere in the country and that happens.

You two have said you share a vision for improving swimming on the South Side generally. What does that look like?

BOB: Building up self-esteem, first of all.

Fred and I, we’ve established this girls’ invita-

I’m only wanting the greatest thing that they can possibly do at that time. The greatest. And I see it inside of people all the time—their eagerness, their tenacity, their fear. were only going to do it for a year. Were there experiences in the first couple years that made you want to do it for a longer period of time, or was it really just “by accident?”

FRED: Well, I got so good at it. There was a time in my fifteenth or sixteenth year when we stopped going to as many swim meets, because I saw what they were doing in practice.

I had three kids, some of that time was starting to eat into my time, and I knew what they were going to do. So I didn’t go to every meet.

The kids were fine. It was the parents who got mad. Because they’re parents, you know, they think they know. I always say the best place for a coach to coach is an orphanage. I have a granddaughter that is a senior, and it’s always fun to see the stages of life—now I’m coming around the second time. Oh, wait, hold on,

tional at South Shore International, and the idea there is to push them to build up self-esteem and self-empowerment. And that’s a vision that I had, and I had friends like Fred that pushed me through to do it. That’s how we complement each other.

FRED: I guess it depends on who’ll have us, too. We made a proposal for Chicago South Swim Club to take it over and enhance it.

Haven’t heard back from them. I don’t know, I just want to continue to share while I’m able to.

BOB: Just the mere fact that he’s still alive…I mean, no one will be able to tap his or my minds in about ten years because we won’t know what the hell we’re doing, we’ll be senile.

FRED: I believe there are Nobel Prize winners—anything and everything that could possibly be great—right here, if they’re given the opportunity to pursue. I just want to be a vehicle for that.

BOB: And as we improve swimming on the South Side, we want it to become a self-driving system, where the kids that swim will become the kids that teach, the kids that go to college, and then they’ll swim in college.

They’ll come back in the summer, they’ll teach again, they’ll teach the adults in the community. There’s a whole plethora of things you can do in an aquatic environment to make it productive and profitable, and just grow it out of its mind. That’s our vision.

FRED: It’s life skills, but I use swimming as the medium for it to be taught. If you go up and down and up and down and use a watch, it equals something that’s not subjective, it’s objective. It’s a fact. It’s not my opinion.

That’s one of the things I like. Doesn’t require someone’s interpretation of what good and bad is. The clock doesn’t tell a story, it doesn’t care who you are. The team aspect is trying to do the best you can to score…as a team.

You cheer for each other. The parents try to get there and set up their stuff. It’s a commitment, it’s a lifestyle, it’s a thing you do.

We have children on our high school team, girls, and I said, “What swimmer do you think you emulate?” I said, for example, to one of my kids, “[Katie] Ledecky.” Now, Ledecky’s Caucasian, and [the student is] black. And she said to me, “You know, I wanna be Simone Ledecky.” I thought that was fabulous. It really was.

So then we talk about attributes: attitude, work hard, dedication. Just because they’re at that place, doesn’t mean you can’t have that attribute. You can be like that now, you’re just not at the Olympics…yet! These Olympians, when they’re kids at nine, eight, seven, six, they say, “I want to be an Olympian and win a gold medal.”

BOB: It’s true, it does happen like that. ¬

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

An Amazing School Jessica Pope on poetry and Lindblom High School AS TOLD TO DANIEL KAY HERTZ

J

essica Pope graduated from Lindblom Math and Science Academy High School in 2016, and led Lindblom’s slam poetry team in the Louder Than a Bomb tournament. She grew up in West Englewood, and will be attending Fisk University this fall.

Lindblom is a selective enrollment high school in West Englewood, at 61st Street and Wolcott Avenue. It consistently ranks as one of the highest-achieving high schools in the city.

I

went to Charles W. Earle Elementary School, and [there] was a student that came from Lindblom. High school students came up to the elementary school, and they helped us with math and English and Mandarin. And in fifth grade, this one girl named Jennifer, she really inspired me to want to go to Lindblom.

At the time, I honestly felt being smart was a bad thing, because all the kids would have made fun of me. But she told me not to worry about that, that if I had goals to push for them, and to believe in myself. Ever since fifth grade, I made straight A’s, had perfect attendance, and I told myself I was going to get into Lindblom. And I ended up getting in.

I had a best friend, she wanted to go to Lindblom, but she didn’t pass the test. I had a lot of people who wanted to go to Lindblom or selective enrollment schools and they couldn’t pass the test. She was very smart, but she just couldn’t pass, and she ended up going to Simeon Academy, and she found very little there. Even my brother—he’s very smart, and he’s currently making straight A’s, but he couldn’t attend Lindblom because he couldn’t pass the reading portion of the test.

He told me he was nervous. I feel like it’s not fair.

[If I hadn’t gotten into Lindblom,] I feel like, knowing me, I would have went to Harper or Dunbar and made the best decisions I could have made. I would have had the same mindset I had in elementary school, which was trying to get out of high school and trying to push myself.

But the difference between Lindblom

and Harper is that at Lindblom I was able to be exposed to so many things. Watching my friends do study abroad programs, engineering, computer science—I’m part of the poetry team. I’m part of a family at Lindblom. I probably would have made one at Harper. I don’t know.

Some of my best friends live in different neighborhoods across the city. I feel like it made me a better person. I didn’t have that at all [before Lindblom]. It helps me learn more about other people’s cultures. I feel like it made me a better person. I don’t think I would have experienced that at Harper.

I have a friend who lives in Beverly. It made me look at things differently. It made me question, Why do I live in a neighborhood like this? Why doesn’t our neighborhood receive special attention like Beverly does? Why is it quiet in Beverly but loud in Englewood? It made me question everything.

I would say it was an eye-opening experience to realize that you don’t come from the same location everybody else does. You have to run while other people have to walk.

It’s hard, but at the end of the day, my appreciation runs deep for any person that I meet.

All of their background stories. It made me a better person, honestly.

I started doing poetry when I was in third grade, but I didn’t get into slam poetry, or want to share my poetry with people, until I was in the sixth or seventh grade. When I got to high school, someone told me that a woman named Molly Myers was in charge of the poetry team, and I was like hunting her down. And when I found her, she told me what day it was supposed to start, and I asked her every day—I wanted to be sure.

And when we started, there were like seven people in the poetry club. Now, on a regular day it gets up to thirty or forty people.

My freshman year, we thought we had this idea of poetry and what it looked like, but we didn’t understand until we started to learn to write about ourselves. Jamila Woods was our freshman year poetry coach, and she honestly helped me be the person that I am

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ SEPTEMBER 7, 2016

today. Like, she is my salvation. I was writing others’ stories, I wasn’t writing my own, I didn’t know how to do that. And she helped me dig deep inside to write about myself.

And that was when it started to click.

Writing about yourself is so important—being vulnerable with people around you is so important. Every day I practice vulnerability with my friends and everybody I come into contact with, because I feel that’s something the world is missing, the opportunity to be vulnerable with each other. That’s honestly how I feel I got

look up to?” But then I realized I’m the one the kids are supposed to look up to now.

That’s when I became captain of the club.

I’m trying to make people feel comfortable in the poetry club, and show their voices and speak up, just like I learned to speak up about things going on in my life. I appreciate Lindblom for letting us say things we want to say.

Have you seen Narnia? I’d describe [Lindblom] the same way. In Narnia, they have the door that people walk past all the time and don’t want to go into. But once

Sometimes I don’t have the energy to educate people that Lindblom is an amazing school, amazing people come from this school, and go on to do great things. through high school. We helped each other get through high school.

When you’re able to be in a space—it’s like being yourself. You don’t have to walk around with a blind over your body. You walk around free, everybody knows everything about you, and it’s beautiful.

Sometimes we have problems that none of us can give advice to, but what we can do is give our love and support to help them get through it. To let them know you’re not alone, if you need somewhere to go, you can come over here, because I don’t think you can walk this earth alone. You need people in your corner to help you get through it.

I looked up to people in the poetry club.

When people started to leave because they graduated, it was hard to make that transition. I was like, “Who am I supposed to

you step inside, you see another world, all of these new people, and you make a family.

You need to go to Lindblom and experience it for yourself. I’ve never been in a location where teachers are so thirsty to help you. They’ll stay after school for you, before school, call their husband or their wife and tell them, “I’ll be late because I have to help my students.” Don’t get me wrong, Lindblom is extremely hard. It blew me back my freshman year, because at Earle, I was valedictorian. When I came to Lindblom, it was like, okay, everybody here is valedictorian.

People don’t want to go through the door because many people believe that since this school is in Englewood that they—they fear for their lives. At schools like Whitney Young and Northside Prep and Jones and so on, because they’re in neighborhoods

EDUCATION

YEESOO CHAE

Sometimes it gets very tiring when somebody looks down on your school because you live on the South Side. that are deemed “safe,” it’s very attractive to be in schools like that. But I feel like those schools are missing the family aspect that Lindblom has. The people make up the building.

Sometimes I don’t have the energy to educate people that Lindblom is an amazing school, amazing people come from this school, and go on to do great things. Sometimes it gets very tiring when somebody looks down on your school because you live on the South Side.

Honestly, we have police officers driving around the school, police officers in the school, security guards everywhere. It’s

rarely any violence that happens outside the school. I have friends that walk down to this fast food place down the street all the time, nothing happens. But people look at the news all day, they don’t come and experience it for themselves.

We had a teachers’ visit that was held at Lindblom during the summer of last year, and I was helping out a friend who was in charge of getting stuff together. And this one woman, she was walking up to the school, and she had this nasty look on her face of disgust. Of, “Oh my God, why is this being held here?” In my mind, that’s what she looked like. And it took her a while to walk

into the building. She was looking around every two seconds. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is really happening.

But then I have to realize, maybe she is afraid because of all the things she heard.

And it makes me sad that we live in a world where people are afraid to walk around. But can I blame her? No, because this is all she sees.

I feel like over time it’s gotten better.

People are starting to look at Lindblom like it’s on the same level as Whitney Young or Northside. I give that up to the students for getting our name out there—like, hey, we’re not shooting people, we’re trying to get our education, and we care about our teachers a lot, and we want our school to stay open.

I feel like it needs to be a focus on neighborhood schools more. They have potential too, and people don’t pay a lot of attention to them. The media portrays selective enrollment schools as the only kids that make it. It’s not true.

Why would you want to go to a school that everyone around you thinks is horrible?

That doesn’t feel right on the brain at all. It makes you feel like, Why am I trying, if people feel like I’m not going to be nothing if I go to this school?

This is part of why I feel that dropout rates are high. No one gives them attention, no one gives them love like they give us at selective enrollment schools. All of these selective enrollment schools have these wonderful teachers, but teachers want a name, too. There are some good teachers at Dunbar, Harper, and so on. But many of them don’t want to work at a school like Harper,

because of what people tell them. It’s about having pride.

I’m part of a program called Target H.O.P.E., and it introduced me to many schools. Fisk University ended up being the school I fell in love with.

Fisk is like a bigger Lindblom. It has poetry everywhere. What I like is Fisk allows me to still be a poet, but also allows me to become an ob-gyn. It has a medical school right next door, and I hope to stay around there to go to medical school. Fisk allows me to be myself, to be vulnerable.

It’s just another family. It’s just like Lindblom, but with more opportunities and more doors.

When I finish, I plan to come back. I feel it’s very important to put love and support back into your community. I want to work with pregnant teenagers and homeless youth and adult women.

I experienced having friends who ended up being pregnant, or homeless. I feel like many people forget about them. There are still some organizations that give them attention, but I want to join the fight and let them know they’re not forgotten. I can be anything I want to be—I could be a computer scientist, live my life as a poet. But my passion, my purpose for life, is helping them.

And I can’t wait to come back to Chicago and start that journey. This interview is republished from The Chicago Dispatch, an online magazine of interviews, essays, and creative work about Chicago, edited

by Daniel Kay Hertz.

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

SOCIAL SERVICES

Keeping the City Safe

A conversation with Alicia Tate-Nadeau on emergency services in Chicago

BY ALEX V. HERNANDEZ There are few services with as consistent a range of public trust—and little public understanding—as the 911 emergency system. This past City Bureau cycle, a team of reporters set out to understand how the Office of Emergency Management and Communications handled 911 calls in Chicago, and what stories there were to be told about the dispatch system. We found that there are few resources to offer dispatchers help with chronic PTSD that can affect their job performance, that the outsourced language translation system can lag at critical times, and there remains enough distrust in 911’s relationship to police in Chicago for some groups to seek to bypass it altogether.

—Yana Kunichoff, City Bureau cycle leader

L

ast month the City Council confirmed Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s appointment of Alicia Tate-Nadeau as Executive Director of the City’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC).

She’s the first woman to serve in the role, which is responsible for overseeing Chicago’s 911 and 311 call centers, and the city’s emergency preparedness and planning efforts.

Tate-Nadeau, a member of the Illinois National Guard, is replacing former OEMC Executive Director Gary Schenkel. Last year she also made history when she was the first woman promoted to the rank of general in the Illinois National Guard. From 2011 to 2014 she served in Israel, where she coordinated emergency management exercises with international partners.

Tate-Nadeau also served in Iraq, where she was stationed from 2005-2006. While in Iraq, Tate-Nadeau advised military operations and worked with the Iraqi population to promote civic engagement with the local and national government. Most recently, she led a FEMA Incident Management Team that assisted in the federal response to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

As the new director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC), is there anything you want to innovate in how things are currently oper-

ated to make it your own?

That’s a great question. I believe whenever I go to any new organization my focus is on finding the balance between technology and ensuring that people have the best training possible. If you don’t have those two in parallel then you don’t have a healthy organization.

Can you tell me a little bit about how 911 operated in Chicago before the introduction of the Computer Aided Dispatch [CAD] system?

We handle over five million calls a year just for 911. So take a moment to think about the use of an automated system over a penand-paper one. You can imagine how quality control and quality assurance increases [with a CAD system]. And being able to give information rapidly to the end user, which would be linking up the person making the 911 to with fire or police first responders.

The state legislators passed a law last year that will require emergency call centers like OEMC across the state to upgrade to what they’re calling a next-generation 911 system by 2020. What kinds of capabilities will that new system have that the current generation one doesn’t?

What’s important to understand about the next-generation 911, which is planned to occur by 2020, is it really just gives us more tools in the toolbox. [For example,] when a caller tells you right now that we need to be looking for someone with a blue shirt on, everyone has a completely different definition of what a blue shirt looks like. It could be light blue or dark blue. But if I can send you a picture and show you what the person in the blue shirt looks like, then it would enhance our response to a call significantly.

As I understand it, the next-generation system is supposed to feature texting, video chat and other new ways to interact with 911. The law allows for an emergency call

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ SEPTEMBER 7, 2016

center to request an exemption to comply with upgrading to the next generation 911 system. Did Chicago request one or does the city plan to comply with the law?

As you know, Chicago’s always been a leader whenever it comes to emergency management. You can always count on us to try and move rapidly when it comes to things that will help us better serve our residents.

You’ve served in high stress locations in your military career. Chicago isn’t a war zone like Iraq, but how does that background inform how you plan to lead the OEMC? You know, emergency management is all about people. It’s about providing the very best service that you can to your residents.

I think that’s the key thing I’ve gotten out of those other experiences. In trying to understand how you can take technology and personnel that are well trained to deliver the best service possible. I’m very passionate about everything that we do being for the betterment of our residents.

Earlier you spoke of the importance you place on finding a balance between technology and training. Are there pet projects, one specific thing that you want to tackle right out of the gate?

I would say the one thing I feel very strongly about is developing a Common Operating Picture. It can be used everywhere from a command post on the ground all the way up to the city, county, the state, and even the federal level. I want to make sure the people who are trying to make decisions get everything they need as rapidly as possible.

If I can help them make a decision even five minutes faster with a Common Operating Picture, because they have all the information in one place, I think that’s the best way to find that balance.

Can you go a little more in detail about what a Common Operating Picture is?

So, imagine you’re looking at the entire City of Chicago and I have a major special event that is going to attract 1.5 to 2 million people in one location.

So something like Lollapalooza?

Yes, right, some kind of special event. Simultaneously I have a bunch of other things going on in the city. Maybe I have something that starts off as a fire, or a crash. Pick whatever the other event is. I need to be able to see all of those things are unfolding in real time and make a determination of where I’m going to move resources. I don’t want to move everything to one location because then I’ve left the remainder of the city vulnerable. I want to be able to very equitably make sure everyone has the resources they need regardless of the nature of the event.

We do an incredible job, in our day-today operations that we never stop working on trying to eke out another thirty seconds or five minutes to give people the opportunity to make a decision or save a life.

What kind of information does OEMC share with the city’s police and fire departments?

The City of Chicago is unique. OEMC doesn’t just do emergency management. We do emergency management and communication, which includes 911 and 311. You’re not going to see this anywhere in the entire nation. [In Chicago] all of these things are rolled underneath one umbrella, which really helps us in our public safety and homeland security. It is absolutely our strength and the thing is that people, both nationally and internationally, look at us to ask themselves, “Wow, how could we do this where we are?”

Now having said that, if you look at how we operate, everything we do is coordinating with all of those public safety entities.

So it’s not just a 911 call, it’s making sure we leverage the technology that is shared between everybody in the public safety world.

So when new technology comes out, be

EVENTS past something that we can handle then we’ll make sure to start talking to the state and federal folks.

And you can guarantee we’re always going to be very proactive in how we’re communicating. If we even have an inkling that some event is going to grow into something else I going to have people sitting there who already know the background and have seen it evolve. That way we’re not taking time to bring them up to speed.

It really is kind of neat the way we watch events grow and evolve. And it’s not by chance, but by design, the way OEMC has developed to address them.

There is no doubt that just by the fact of the sheer volume of the five million 911 calls that we handle every year, nine million total calls if you include 311 calls. We want to be there for our residents. The technology that we have now allows us to be there for them in a very timely manner and connect them to the people driving out in squad cars and fire engines.

Chicago is a multicultural city. There are people who primarily speak English, but you also have other residents who speak Spanish, Polish and other languages. How does the OEMC’s CAD system handle calls by residents who don’t speak English?

ELLEN HAO

it a radio or even radio frequencies, cameras, any kind of technology related to public safety, we’re right there working with the users. And the strength of that is that we make sure we’re giving the same information to everyone.

So could OEMC be described as the first adopter when it comes to communications technology for the city?

Not just communications, though. It’s making sure that information related to things that are going on both internationally and nationally that could impact public safety.

We’re sharing that information and we’re talking about it with all of our partners. It goes far beyond just fire and police. We’re also talking to our streets and sanitation people, making sure that our schools are tied in.

So could an example of that be extreme weather like a blizzard or Chicago’s lead

crisis?

So particularly, any large scale flood, any kind of natural disaster out there, we’re going to be in the lead coordinating all those other agencies together so we can rapidly meet the needs of our residents. We actually have something called “Snow Command” at OEMC. Again, what I think is kind of neat about how we do things here in Chicago is we’ve got a room that looks at the entire city.

So if we see an event that starts to unfold, we’ve already got people from streets and sanitation, from the public schools, people from all of our other agencies sitting in that room. They’ll look at it, everyone talks about it, and they’ll come up with a plan.

If that event, whatever it is, grows into something larger, we have another room next to the one that looks at the entire city.

In that other room I’m bringing everybody in, all of the agencies and ancillary agencies in the city. At that point, if the event grows

We actually work with a language interpretation service, which provides support for about 140 different languages. I think the most common non-English languages that we experience are Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Spanish, French, and Tagalog.

So someone calls 911 who only speaks Polish, what happens next?

An operator will ask the caller to hold on one second while they get the member that we have for the language interpretation service that we use. The operator pushes a button and the caller is automatically connected to someone who listens to what the caller is trying to say. If it sounds like Polish, the interpretation service will get someone who speaks Polish to get on the line to work in unison with the dispatcher handling the 911 call. This report was produced in collaboration with City Bureau, a Chicago-based journalism lab. City Bureau will be publishing the results of this seven-week investigation with partner organizations, including the South Side Weekly, and at citybureau.org/911.

City Bureau can be reached at info@citybureau.org with any questions or tips about 911 in Chicago.

BULLETIN Creative Schools Fund Information Session Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, 250 E. 111th St. Thursday, September 8, 5pm–7pm. Free. RSVP at bit.ly/2cn1RKB. (312) 583-7459. ingenuity-inc.org Ingenuity, an arts advocacy organization, welcomes artists, educators, and art partners to an information session on their Creative Schools Fund. Learn about how to apply for a grant to bring arts education resources to local schools in the 2016–17 academic year.

The grant deadline is September 30. (Kanisha Williams)

CHA Affordable Housing Seminar Back of the Yards Library, 2111 W. 47th St. Saturday, September 10, noon–1:30pm. Free.

RSVP at bit.ly/2ct6LGq. (773) 292-5784. sc4housing.org Affordable housing in Chicago entered a new era with the destruction of most of Chicago’s high-profile public housing projects.

Resources still exist—access, however, can be an issue. This event, hosted by the Chicago Housing Authority and the Spanish Coalition for Housing, aims to connect residents of Back of the Yards with CHA programs.

(Adam Thorp)

UIC Urban Forum: Jobs and the Labor Force of Tomorrow UIC Forum, 725 W. Roosevelt Rd. Thursday, September 15, 8:45am–1pm. $25. Free for Chicago teachers, faculty and students with school ID. Online registration required. Lunch provided with admission. (312) 413-2194. uicurbanforum.org At this incarnation of UIC’s yearly exploration of urban issues, academics will present white papers on the future of labor from the vantages of migration, secondary education, and post-graduate training. The keynote address will be delivered by Clarence Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist with the Tribune. (Adam Thorp)

2nd Annual Summit for Action & Civic Reform Columbia College, 1104 S. Wabash Ave. Thursday, September 15, 10am–4pm. Free. RSVP at icprsummit.eventbrite.com. (312) 436-1274. ilcampaign.org

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

EVENTS

Join activists from around Chicagoland for a discussion focusing on pressing civic challenges and how to solve them. Panel discussion topics will include money in politics, engaging millennials, voter access, and strategies for social justice movements. ( Joshua Maymir)

Alan Wieder on Studs Terkel Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Thursday, September 15, 6pm–7:30pm. Free.

(773) 752-4381. semcoop.com Studs Terkel, a man who recorded and curated the stories of countless Chicagoans, more than earned a book-length account of his own life. So the oral historian Alan Wieder wrote one; come to this event to hear him talk about it with local author and radical Bill Ayers. (Adam Thorp)

In The Game Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. Saturday, September 17, 2pm–5pm. Free. RSVP at inthegame.eventbrite.com. (773) 509-5330. wttw.com Two-time Peabody Award-winner Maria Finitzo’s In the Game highlights the obstacles facing low-income students by chronicling the struggles of a girls’ soccer team at Kelly High as they persevere against discrimination and a lack of services at their South Side school. The screening is presented by WTTW Channel 11 Chicago. ( Joshua Maymir)

Beyond Our Vision: An Introduction to Understanding Systemic Racism Br. David Darst Center, 2834 S. Normal Ave. Wednesday, September 21, 6:30pm–8pm. Free.

RSVP at bit.ly/2cmXbo4. (312) 225-3099. darstcenter.org Enjoy light refreshments while tackling the heavy, but salient, topic of systemic racism at the Darst Center. The workshop, hosted in partnership with Chicago Regional Organizing for AntiRacism, will be facilitated

by Derrick C. Dawson and Karen Ziech.

(Kanisha Williams)

VISUAL ARTS Ground Floor Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. September 4 through November 6; Mon-

day–Thursday, 9am–8pm, Friday–Saturday, 9am–5pm, Sunday, noon–5pm. (773) 3245520. hydeparkart.org In this, the fourth iteration of HPAC’s showcase for young talent, HPAC’s Exhibitions Committee of celebrated Chicago artists has selected a crop of brave new local talents for a multifaceted exhibition and fellowship program. ( Jake Bittle)

Ben Rivers: Urth Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Ave., 4th floor.

Opening Saturday, September 10, 5pm–8pm.

Through November 6. Tuesday–Friday, 10am–5pm, Saturday–Sunday, noon–5pm.

(773) 702-8670. renaissancesociety.org London-based filmmaker and artist Ben Rivers will present his first-ever solo exhibition in the United States, Urth, at the UofC’s Renaissance Society. Filmed largely in Biosphere 2 in Arizona, the project “forms a cinematic meditation on ambitious experiments, constructed environments, and visions of the future.” ( Jake Bittle)

Floating Museum: Floating Archive and Calumet Installation Calumet Park, 9801 S. Avenue G. Open Sunday, September 11, through Saturday, October 8.

Monday–Friday, 8am–9pm. Opening reception Sunday, September 11, noon–6pm. Free. (312) 747-6039. thefloatingmuseum.com In a continuation of the innovative Floating Museum project, artists Faheem Majeed, Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, and designer Andrew Schachman will unveil a pavilion sculpture installation in Calumet Park, designed to both engage with and challenge notions of the conventional exhibition and museum. After its month in Calumet, the Archive will be floated through the waterways of Chicago up to DuSable Park, making various stops along the way. (Emeline Posner)

Searching the Starry Sky 4th Ward Project Space, 5338 S. Kimbark Ave. Opening reception Sunday, September 18, 4pm–7pm. Through Sunday, October 16. Saturday, 1pm–5pm by appointment. Free. (773) 203-2991. 4wps.org Vancouver-based artist Emily Hermant is interested in playing with the dynamic between slow, hand-based processes of making and the speed of digital information. Her solo show features a new collection of hand-rendered drawings based on glitch-infused images of

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ SEPTEMBER 7, 2016

the night sky. Themes of wonder and fear pervade, as Hermant addresses the tension between the digital, the cosmic, and the material. (Corinne Butta)

and friends are bound to deliver a powerful set of the best of bling rap. (Troy Ordonez)

MUSIC Coultrain

Alternative Histories of Labor: Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle

Currency Exchange Café, 305 E. Garfield Blvd.

Monday, September 12. 7pm–9pm. Free. (773) 702.9724. arts.uchicago.edu

CPL Pullman Branch, 11001 S. Indiana Ave. Thursday, September 8, 6pm. Free. (312) 7472033. southsideprojections.org

As part of the “First Mondays Jazz Series,” singer-songwriter and poet Coultrain will be bringing his vibes and words to the Currency Exchange Café on September 12, with bassist Matt Lux and guitarist-sitarist Aaron Shapiro providing backup to Coultrain’s “ethereal lyricism and infectious vocals.” (Austin Brown)

South Side Projections’ series on nonwhite, non-male labor movements turns inevitably, and deservedly, to Pullman, home of the first African American labor union. Two Roosevelt University history professors will be on hand to introduce and discuss the 1982 documentary on the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porter’s titular struggle for union recognition. ( Julia Aizuss)

Chosen Thursdays The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Thursday, September 15. Doors 9pm, show 10pm. $5 early bird, $10 regular. 21+. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com RFK and the Way We Were present three founding Chicago house DJs Andre Hatchett, Greg Winfield, and Alan King next Thursday at the Promontory. Hatchett and King are also founding members of The Chosen Few DJs, a legendary and seminal group that popularized house in the seventies and eighties. (CJ Fraley)

Peaches Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Monday, September 19. Doors 8pm, show 9pm. $23 standing room, $33 seats. 17+. (312) 526-3851. thaliachicago.com Dance the pain away with a provocative pop performance from avant-pop producer Peaches. Refreshed but still progressive, and out with her latest album Rub, Peaches is sure to give showgoers an adventurous and lively performance. (Troy Ordonez)

Gucci Mane at Powerfest 2016 UIC Pavilion, 525 S. Racine Ave. Friday, September 23. Doors 7pm, show 8pm–11pm. $40+.

(312) 413-5700. uicpavilion.com “Trap God” Gucci Mane takes the stage at the UIC Pavilion for a homecoming performance at “Powerfest” 2016, which they’re calling “the greatest show on earth.” Gucci

STAGE & SCREEN

(((waver)) project: Open Workshops High Concept Labs at Mana Contemporary, 2233 S. Throop St. Fridays through September 30, 6pm–8:30pm. $10 suggested donation. highconceptlaboratories.org Jury’s out on whether you’ll learn the story behind the asymmetric parentheses use, but until the end of the month you can drop in to HCL fall sponsored artist Carole McCurdy’s research workshops on partnered dance—and if you enjoy yourself enough, audition for the upcoming production. ( Julia Aizuss)

Man in the Ring Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Thursday, September 15–Sunday, October 16, 8pm. $38; discounts available for students, seniors, and groups. (773) 753-4472. courttheatre.org The true story of legendary boxer Emile Griffith, brought to life through the writing of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Michael Cristofer and the direction of Charles Newell, is a story about fighting, both for boxing titles and the ability to define oneself. (CJ Fraley)

James Van Der Zee and the Harlem Renaissance Blanc Gallery, 4445 S. Martin Luther King Dr. Wednesday, September 14, 7pm. (773) 3734320. southsideprojections.org The two films to be shown at this event highlight the work of the Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee and the

world his camera captured. Patric McCoy, a leading collector of black art in Chicago, will lead a discussion after the screening. (Adam Thorp)

Finding Fanon: Screening and Artist Talk Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Friday, September 16, 7pm–9pm. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org In compensation for the disappearance of Frantz Fanon’s three lost plays, Larry Achiampong and David Blandy teamed up in 2015 for a trilogy of films with media ranging from music videos to Machinima to inform their own investigations of—and investments in—the colonialism Fanon wrote on. One year and two films later, the artists come to the Arts Bank to discuss what’s next. ( Julia Aizuss)

The Colored Museum eta creative arts, 7558 S. South Chicago Ave. Friday, September 23–Sunday, October 23, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm; Sundays at 3pm. $35; $25 seniors; $15 students. (773) 752-3955. etacreativearts.org In eleven “exhibits,” George C. Wolfe’s satirical play, staged by Pulse Theatre Company, examines stereotypes and identity in the black experience from a “celebrity slave-ship” to an imagined dinner party where “Aunt Jemima and Angela Davis was in the kitchen sharing a plate of greens and just goin’ off about South Africa.” (Adam Thorp)

LIT Chinaka Hodge at Seminary Coop Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Thursday, September 8, 6pm. (773) 7524381. semcoop.com Oakland-born, NYU-educated poet-playwright-educator-screenwriter Chinaka Hodge will read from and discuss her new book Dated Emcees, in which she “examines her love life through the lens of hip-hop’s best known orators, characters, archetypes and songs,” exploring her personal relationship to a genre that changed the landscape of American music. ( Jake Bittle)

Mitigating Evidence at CAD Chicago Art Department, 1932 S. Halsted St.

Opens Friday, September 9, 6pm–10pm, then by appointment through Tuesday, October 4. freewritechicago.org This exhibition of art and writing by young people who have been incarcerated in the Cook County Jail and downstate Stateville Correctional Center will coincide with the release of the seventh anthology of work by Free Write Arts & Literacy, a group that seeks to facilitate artistic expression among incarcerated individuals. ( Jake Bittle)

Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad with Natalie Moore Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Tuesday, September 13, 6pm. $5 general admission; $30 general admission including one copy of The Underground Railroad. (773) 702-2787. arts. uchicago.edu Join Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author Colson Whitehead and WBEZ reporter Natalie Moore as they discuss Whitehead’s latest novel, The Underground Railroad—a poignant and gripping story of Cora, a slave who escapes her Georgia plantation in search of freedom. (Kanisha Williams)

Dave Baron’s Pembroke with Yondi K. Morris-Andrews Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Wednesday, September 14, 6pm–7:30pm.

Free. (773) 752-4381. semcoop.com Dave Baron, a constitutional litigator in the City of Chicago’s Law Department, sits down with Yondi K. Morris-Andrews, founding partner of Knight, Morris & Reddick Law Group, to discuss Baron’s Pembroke, a deep look into the Pembroke Township of Illinois, a township of black farmers with roots in the Great Migration struggling to attain ever-elusive economic prosperity. (Kanisha Williams)

FREEMAN’s release Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Tuesday, September 20, 6pm–8pm. Free.

(773) 752-4381. semcoop.com Join the Co-op in celebration of the release of FREEMAN’S: Family, the second issue of the serial literary journal edited by John Freeman, former editor of Granta. Aleksandar Hemon, the acclaimed Sarajevo-born Chicagoan author of The Making of Zombie Wars, is Freeman’s interlocutor. RSVP on Facebook. (Neal Jochmann) SEPTEMBER 7, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19