July 6 - 19, 2020 (June 15 - 21, 2020 Print Edition)

July 6 - 19, 2020 Vol. 28 No. 27

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$1.10 goes to vendor

We ARE STILL HERE and Back in the Streets!

The past few months have been tumultuous.

In the blink of an eye, every StreetWise magazine vendor became unemployed, which caused many to lose their livelihoods and community of support. We had to change the way we do things, the way we deliver our services and fulfill our mission. Almost overnight, StreetWise went from a community with a mission of a hand up, not a handout, to a place to drop in, get basic food and emergency cash support, and leave. It was a difficult time.

As we move into Phase 4, businesses, museums and parks begin to reopen.

StreetWise vendors are excited to be among those returning to work.

This is our first printed edition of the magazine since March 30. We are pleased to highlight the work of Matthew Hoffman and his message of positivity. Issues like this remind me how the magazine is now, more than ever, as important as it’s ever been as we give a voice to those who experience homelessness, poverty, injustice, and inequality while building connections between different communities.

I want to thank you all for your support for our vendors over these past several months. Because of you, our vendors were able to maintain a modest income through donations and subscriptions, to receive meals and essential PPE, and, as important, your words of encouragement and expressions of gratitude.

Because of you, today is possible!

Thank you for your support for StreetWise and the magazine vendor force!

Please stay healthy,

Julie Youngquist

Executive Director | StreetWise

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From the Streets

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Cover Story: Matthew Hoffman

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Twenty-five years after the heat wave of July 1995, the same population is suffering from cases of COVID-19 today, the result of structural racism, as discussed in a recent 3-day online conference that also looked at the impact of the death of George Floyd.

Matthew Hoffman is the artist behind the “You Are Beautiful” installations you may have seen all over Chicago. But as we talked with him, and discussed his collaborations with Hope for the Day suicide prevention outreach and now Giveashi*t to benefit StreetWise, we realized the underlying message for all his expressions is really “You Are Enough,” which is especially helpful now.

Inside Streetwise

StreetWise Vendor Lady David shares a poem inspired by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a police officer to preview our upcoming double-sized #BlackLivesMatter special edition.

The Playground ON THE COVER: Installations by Matthew Hoffman, provided by the artist, except StreetWise Vendor Gwen in front of the "Anything is Possible" mural, photo by Kathleen Hinkel.

THIS PAGE: A "You Are Beautiful" sticker on a heavily graffitied New York City subway sign, from You Are Beautiful Facebook.

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Dave Hamilton, Creative Director/Publisher

dhamilton@streetwise.org

Suzanne Hanney, Editor-In-Chief

suzannestreetwise@yahoo.com

Amanda Jones, Director of programs

ajones@streetwise.org

Julie Youngquist, CEO

jyoungquist@streetwise.org

Office: 2009 S. State St., Chicago, IL 60616

StreetWiseChicago @StreetWise_CHI LEARN MORE AT streetwise.org

COvid-19 and 1995's heat wave affect same communities due to structural racism

by Suzanne Hanney

In the middle of the 1995 Chicago heat wave, Chicago Sun-Times reporter Maudlyne Iherijika got a call from her editor to drop everything and head over to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. Refrigerated trucks were being used as an overflow morgue.

As temperatures hit 106 for three days beginning July 13 – with humidity making it feel like 126 degrees – 739 people died.

“I’m so glad in the past few weeks almost all Americans are using the term ‘structural racism,’” said Dr. Murray, who compared the concept to bad soil that produces unhealthy plants. It is a concept that says some people are better and deserve more resources, that others deserve less and it “creates the situation we had in 1995 with the heat wave and with COVID-19.”

What’s needed?

“Many had been found decomposing in their homes because nobody bothered to check on them,” Iherijika said as the host of a recent three-day online conference about the 25th anniversary of the heat wave in the context of COVID-19, climate change, and the death of George Floyd.

“They had no families, they were poor and in communities where they felt unsafe so the windows were nailed shut. And we had forgotten them. It was the most heartrending thing for me as a young African American reporter in her 20s to write this story. [The picture of] trucks being pulled up to the back of a building filled with bodies of people who looked like me will stay with me forever.”

The “Summer of Extremes: Racism, Health Inequity and Heat” conference featured Chicago journalists, community leaders, author Eric Klinenberg, and documentary director/producer Judith Helfand. Klinenberg is the author of “Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago,” which saw the deaths as structural racism: society’s failure due to poverty and disinvested neighborhoods, lack of health care and food options. Helfand’s 2018 “Cooked: Survival by ZIP Code,” looked at climate change and predicted another crisis unless society did something to change systemic racism.

Something akin to the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II, said Anton Seals, Grow Greater Englewood executive director. “This is a system that needs to be broken apart. No more shellacking, piecemealing our way out of it, no more halfstepping mumbo jumbo.”

One-off solutions won’t work, agreed Cook County Commissioner Dennis Deer, who suggested up to $100 million invested in neighborhoods over 10 years. Deer, whose second district stretches between Division and 75th Streets, Laramie Avenue and King Drive, sponsored an ordinance that resulted in the county’s first, recently hired Chief Equity Officer, whose duties will include monitoring minority access to public contracts.

“The map looks the same if you look at homicides, cancer, diabetes; you can’t be healthy by yourself. You are healthy because of the whole environment around you,” said Linda Rae Murray, MD, MPH, chief for the Chicago Department of Health under Mayor Harold Washington, former chief medical officer of the Cook County Health System and former American Public Health Association president.

Even considering co-morbidities such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, Dr. Murray said 100 White vegans would outlive 100 Black vegans, because of environment. North Shore smokers would outlive those on the COVID map. The reason is that more Whites are able to work from home and fewer of them have highrisk jobs such as bus driver or health care worker.

We have survived the last few months by physically distancing ourselves, but if we want a better city, we need mutual aid for older, solitary neighbors, Klinenberg said. “Everything is on the line this summer. What’s terrifying and exciting is the climate change movement, the Black Lives Matter Movement…in a few months we might see a white supremacist re-elected but we could also go in the opposite direction and there would be the most extraordinary changes.”

www.streetwise.org

FROM THE STREETS

That crisis was COVID-19, whose impact map shows the same people affected as in the heat wave of 25 years ago.

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by Suzanne Hanney

COVER STORY

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StreetWise Vendor Gwendolyn Freeman bikes past the "Anything is Possible" mural at Jewel-Osco, 5516 N. Clark St., just one block north of her regular selling spot in Andersonville.

(Kathleen Hinkel photo.)

OPPOSITE PAGE: "What You Do Matters" project for the Chicago Community Trust; "Love" mural at the @properties headquarters; The You Are Beautiful store at 3368 N. Elston Ave. in Avondale. (photos provided by you-arebeautiful.com)

ewly moved to Chicago in 2002, Matthew Hoffman experienced a moment of insecurity that led him to create “You Are Beautiful,” (YAB) a positive message he has since spread all over the world via 6.5 million stickers, public art installations and the Oprah Network.

More recently, his work has included art around the expressions, “It’s OK Not to be OK,” a collaboration with the Hope For The Day suicide prevention non-profit, and a T-shirt for Giveashi*t to benefit StreetWise that proclaims, “We Are All Equal.”

“I was born in Ohio and we moved around a lot in Ohio and Indiana,” Hoffman said in a telephone interview. “I went to school in Indiana, at Ball State for graphic design. We would take the South Shore [train] into the city to go to the museums. I was always seeing that skyline and being blown away by it. I did eventually come to Chicago in 2002 for a publications firm. I was on my own; I didn’t have friends or family. It made it really exciting. I had never been in a larger urban environment before. It was incredible but there was also a lot of chaos, visible noise, audible noise, advertisements I had never experienced, kind of playing on your insecurity. It was also, in my opinion, the golden age of street art. I had seen things online with the message: ‘Be yourself. That’s enough.’ I wanted to make that calming message.”

Online printing was unavailable at the time, so Hoffman found a printer who made sticker business cards proclaiming “You are Beautiful” in his now-iconic black type on silver square. “I am all about doing, doing, throwing it out in the world and revising it from there. I had 100 and I put them up all over the place. I was living in Wicker Park and because they were paper, they quickly disappeared because of the rain and the harsh climate. I noticed that on doors of restaurants there were locksmith stickers, warning stickers that you just gloss over. The idea was the silver sticker was designed to blend in, be obtrusive. When it hits you, it’s a little bit of positive.”

you are enough:

chicago artist matthew hoffman spreads a message of hope around the world

With installations in Andersonville, Uptown, Roscoe Village, Pullman, Englewood and more, You Are Beautiful has no socioeconomic boundaries, which Hoffman calls his proudest achievement.

“My intention was to keep it completely open to everyone and that has been the case: young skater guys slapping up stickers as they go down the sidewalk and moms taking their family to brunch on Sunday,” Hoffman said. He sees people from all walks of life at the YAB brick-and-mortar headquarters/ store, which opened in late 2018 at 3368 N. Elston Ave. The diversity is even more apparent online, where YAB passed the 6.5 million mark for stickers earlier this year.

Hoffman started the project with a single-page website and a still-standing offer of five free stickers to anyone who sends in a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Before long, Hoffman was receiving letters with photos of stickers on landmarks all over the world: Amsterdam, Mongolia, Brussels, Vietnam, Russia, Cambodia, the Great Wall of China and even Antarctica, where someone stickered a stuffed penguin and placed it in a field of real penguins.

“For me, the most meaningful part has been the response from the people the message has touched,” Hoffman said on the YouTube video from the Oprah Network’s SuperSoul Sunday. “I just know how important it is if I am having a down day and something or someone does something to pick me up.

To be able to do that for other people is incredible. It’s about the message and about spreading it. This is a message everyone needs to hear.”

A couple of days of reflection afterward, Hoffman emailed to say that he liked the way the interview kept circling back to “You Are Enough” as the framework for his art. “I’d like to make a fence installation with this phrase and donate it to a community. If that at all makes sense to mention in the article – and that neighborhoods could reach out to get it—wonderful.”

Hoffman’s art “can help shape the community, reminding people what things are important,” @properties co-founder Thaddeus Wong told Redeye in regard to the “love” mural Hoffman did on their Bucktown headquarters. “Matthew Hoffman’s art makes people feel wonderful.”

Similarly, “What You Do Matters” was the message Hoffman created for the logo, buttons, tote bags and T-shirts for The Chicago Community Trust’s centennial.

“We wanted to stress that it isn’t just the million-dollar donations but also the clothing drives, the soup kitchens, shoveling snow from your neighbor’s driveway, mentoring kids and reading to the elderly – what you do matters,” Eva Penar, thenmarketing and communications director for The Trust, told Redeye.

Isn’t “You Are Enough” really the common denominator to his works?

StreetWise asked Hoffman.

“Absolutely. There’s so much going on, so many voices, people, and companies vying for your attention. And your pocketbook.

It gets overwhelming and confusing. I am solely talking from a personal standpoint.

To have moments to be reminded everything’s OK and you’re enough – that’s essential.”

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it's o not t be o

Hoffman’s latest work is a silver-on-black T-shirt for Giveashi*t to benefit StreetWise, proclaiming “we are all equal.”

“I am really a fan of StreetWise and the model and what it does,” Hoffman said. “I think it’s an incredible cause. I was talking with Scott [Marvel, president of the Daily Planet, of which Giveashi*t is a subsidiary] and he said that’s the general idea they were playing with this year, that ‘we are all equal.’ I said that’s perfect, that’s what it should be. For me the simplest phrase says the most and I went right with it.”

“We were looking to expand our artist talent pool and I’ve never met Matthew but I know his work is very positive,” Marvel said of his decision to reach out to Hoffman as a contributing artist. “We try to get positive messages out there. We emailed him and got an email back right away.”

Hoffman’s T-shirt design proclaims “a simple, classic, positive message,” Marvel said. “It’s clearly hand-drawn; it kind of mimics the classic ‘You Are Beautiful.’

“Some people gravitate to wearing a saying: ‘Empathy Rocks,’ ‘We are Born to Wander,’” Marvel said. “Those things hit a target of our audience.

Some people see a T-shirt almost as a bumper sticker to put a message out into the world: ‘This is a saying I literally stand behind.’ We love the design so much it’s the first design we’ve done on a onesie.” However, the onesie features a centralized logo because Hoffman’s original design put the words where a chest pocket would be – and a onesie doesn’t have room for a pocket big enough for legible words.

While the original YAB stickers featured the message in black typeface on a silver background, Hoffman has since added a cursive "We Are All Equal" version in wood. Both are trademarked now, but he says the shirt and onesie designs for GivAShi*t, block type and cursive versions deliver two different psycho- available at giveashirt. net, with all proceeds logical effects.

The stickers are meant to blend in as signage. “It catches you a little off guard.” But the cursive -- and anything hand-drawn – “makes it a little more direct. A person is trying to tell me something. You see that through the human touch.”

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benefiting StreetWise. (photos provided by Jeannine RinglandZwirn) OPPOSITE PAGE: "It's OK Not To Be OK" installation surrounded by to-go orders during the COVID-19 crisis at Sip of Hope, 3039 W. Fullerton Ave., in Logan Square.

Soon after Matthew Hoffman started the You Are Beautiful project in 2002 with an offer of five free stickers to anyone who sent a stamped, self-addressed envelope, he was astonished to receive letters and photos of stickers on landmarks as far away as China and Antarctica. But it was a letter from Florida that really moved him.

“Someone sent a photograph of a sticker they had put on a bridge railing,” Hoffman said in a telephone interview. “Right below, there was a plaque where someone had taken their life some time before.

They put the sticker up and hoped that if someone was in the same position, they might rethink their action. It really struck me how powerful a few words can be.

What it did for me was, it reminded me of the significance of everything I do and everything I put out, that I put through the lens: not only that it is open and accepting of everyone but that it will do some good and not add to the negativity. It reinforced my guiding principles.”

Jonny Boucher, meanwhile, grew up just north of Chicago and entered the music scene at age 13 by putting on punk metal shows and creating community spaces where people felt they could belong. When Boucher’s boss and mentor, Mike Scanlan, died of suicide in 2010, he was the ninth person close to Boucher to do so. It was a “final straw moment” that led Boucher to found Hope For The Day

ok to ok (HFTD), a non-profit movement for proactive suicide prevention through outreach and mental health education.

Initially, Boucher would just say a few words onstage after concerts and would encourage people to reach out for help. But the more he did so, the more people came forward, which showed him that breaking the silence empowered people to express their challenges.

Suicide death rates have surged to a 30-year high, with 800,000 reported annually around the world and over 121 individuals daily in the U.S. alone, according to the HFTD website, hftd.org. As CEO of HFTD, Boucher says it’s not a new trend.

“The more we expose it, the more we see like my boss Mike, when he took his life, there was the desire to say it was an ‘accidental death. Oh, we don’t want the family to be plagued by that.’ We haven’t had the best reporting.”

Hope For The Day had developed its own expression, “It’s OK Not to Be OK.” When Boucher and Hoffman exhibited at the same Northwest Side art show, Boucher approached Hoffman, noted their similar work around positive messages, and suggested they work together.

Hoffman’s first project for the collaboration is a 24-footwide, cursive “It’s OK Not to Be OK” for Sip of Hope, HFTD’s coffee shop at 3039 W. Fullerton Ave. in Logan Square, where all proceeds go to mental illness education. Four more outdoor installations are in the works, which Boucher said will go nationwide.

“We’ve enjoyed working with Matthew,” Boucher said.

“It’s art and it’s words and we know people are impacted differently when they see and read things.”

Since Boucher started HFTD in 2011 at age 24, he has taken the message “It’s OK Not to Be OK” to the United Kingdom and 20 countries around the world, even while remaining a very local non-profit in Illinois and the Midwest. HFTD is not a hotline, a mental health service provider or a community center, but it provides free one-hour mental health workshops and its website, www.htfd.org, acts as a compass to affordable mental health services and resources such as food, housing, health care, and more.

“The slogan was part of the origin of it all,” Boucher said.

“I broke it down that if all the people I had lost knew that it was OK to talk about it, and OK not to be OK. Mental health is such a big thing, if we could have this conversation internally, and ask for help. It starts with us. We are not going to be able to dismantle bipolar disorder, PTSD,” or that men and women shouldn’t cry in certain situations. “It’s a matter of balance. There are good days and bad days.

“The slogan is really about being there and people being able to respond to it how they need to,” Boucher said.

“We’ve set up at festivals all over the world and people will say, ‘Tell me more. This is what I needed to hear.’ It allows them to start that conversation with staff or volunteers. They will say, ‘I came to this concert to get away.’

Or, ‘Give me more. I have a family member or friend who is hurting, who could hear this.’

“To me the return on the investment is that one conversation – we have hundreds – the one person who truly needed it at the time. One conversation can truly save a life and that’s all that matters.”

www.streetwise.org

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"You Are Beautiful" adorns the construction site of Block 37 in 13 languages; A large "You Are Beautiful" design welcomes vistors to Oakwood off of South Lake Shore Drive; "Less is More" on the abandoned Uptown Lounge at Sheridan & Irving Park Road.; "You Are Beautiful" adorns a fence at the parking lot for the Swedish American Museum in Andersonville; Englewood's "You Are Beautiful" installation as viewed from Kusanya Cafe (photo provided by Brian Bonanno); Matthew Hoffman. (All photos provided by you-arebeautiful.com unless noted)

Early on, Hoffman was doing outdoor installations – often without permission – attached to broken down fences or boarded up buildings. To make them look legitimate, he made the YAB block letters bigger, and from wood.

In 2005, he did an official collaboration on scaffolding for Block 37 construction that ran the entire block of State Street between Washington and Randolph Streets; 250 artists joined him in a 300-foot-long piece that spelled out You Are Beautiful in 13 languages. The mural remained in place for four years, which reminded Hoffman that his outdoor artwork could last. After a YAB piece had been in a Chicago Cultural Center exposition, Hoffman placed it at the Oakwood exit off South Lake Shore Drive. “Individuals, the city and the park district have been great to us,” he said.

Eco-Andersonville, an initiative of the non-profit Andersonville Sustainable Community Alliance, which is under the chamber of commerce umbrella, sought to use Hoffman’s public art to create community. It staged a Kickstarter campaign in February 2015 that raised $7,312 from 180 backers to bring three YAB installations to the neighborhood.

“I tried to identify parts of the neighborhood that are underutilized or overlooked and to figure out ways to reimagine those spaces in ways that generate community or create points of community interaction,” then-Andersonville Sustainable Programs Manager Brian Bonanno said in the Kickstarter video.

Extra funding above the $5,000 goal was “offered as a donation to a community that can use a positive message,” Hoffman said on the video.

A version of YAB went up in Englewood, catty-corner from Kusanya Café, 825 W. 69th St., whose proprietors helped Bonanno and Hoffman gain permission from the owners of the fenced property. Greater Englewood Development Corporation had partnered with the Andersonville group, and made the Kusanya introduction.

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Andersonville’s block letter versions of You Are Beautiful are located at: • The AT&T building fence at Clark and Winona Streets • The Swedish American Museum parking lot fence at Foster and Ashland Avenues • The Chiro1 parking lot at Clark Street and Olive Avenue, where its chalkboard paint coating allows people to write messages “We know everyone loves them, we point them out on tours and people take photos of them,” Andersonville Chamber of Commerce Director of Marketing Joelle Scillia said.

The chamber and Special Service Area 22 placed a fourth piece of Hoffman’s art in Andersonville: the “Anything is Possible” mural on the side of the Jewel food store at 5516 N. Clark St. The store’s wall had unintentionally created a barrier for many people between the north and south ends of the neighborhood. The hope was that people would come and see the artwork and realize that there were more businesses beyond it, Scillia said. Hoffman presented three different slogans, the chamber picked the finalist and Jewel’s corporate headquarters gave final approval.

“Anything is Possible,” (which Hoffman also placed on the Audubon School with the help of the Roscoe Village Neighbors Association), along with “You Are Beautiful” and “Go for It,” are the three most popular sayings for school installations, Hoffman said. However, for the St. Matthias School fence at the northeast corner of Western and Ainslie in Lincoln Square, Hoffman met with each grade level and talked about what was important to them. Although the whole student body voted, the older students picked the phrase “Be Your Best Self.” Middle schoolers determined the mosaic patterning and the youngest pupils the multi-color scheme.

“I feel getting people involved in making it is not only a fun process. Now those kids for rest of their lives can say, ‘I helped make that; that is my contribution,’” Hoffman said.

Uptown United’s executive director had been at the Andersonville chamber during the mural project, which led to another cursive You Are Beautiful installation at the northeast corner of Sunnyside Avenue and Broadway, on the fence of a closed Chicago Public School that is now the Stewart School Loft apartments.

The site was chosen, said Justin Weidl, Uptown United business district manager, because it is a high-traffic area cattycorner from a Target store and across the street from an Aldi.

The fence was also on public property, since Kenmore Avenue used to go all the way through to Sunnyside Avenue and the Chicago Department of Transportation kept the right of way, which is now used by the Peterson Garden Project. It’s public space with high visibility.

“All of our art is trying to send a positive message. There was such a good reaction to Matthew, it opened the way to doing more art in the neighborhood,” Weidl said – such as the wall of murals in the 4600 block of North Clifton Street, just north of the CTA Red Line Wilson station.

Enough remaining funds were left over from the cursive YAB that Uptown United asked Hoffman to do a mural version in an alley off the south side of Lawrence Avenue, between Winthrop and Kenmore, east of the Aragon Ballroom. Hoffman put out a call on Instagram at 10 p.m. and had 30 volunteer painters the next morning.

Uptown United also facilitated a Hoffman work on a building at Sheridan and Irving Park Roads owned by Thorek Hospital.

Zappos online shoe company sponsored installations all over the U.S. with the theme of “Less is More.” Hoffman designed the word “More” in his iconic cursive embedded with the word “Less.”

“It resonated so much with what I do, working with what you have, figuring out how to do the most with the least amount of stuff you have,” Hoffman said.

“I am certainly a maker, an artist, first -- long before I was a businessperson, and I have accidentally fallen into this and struggled with it a bit,” he said. “In business you are supposed to figure out your target demographic. With the message being open to all, there is no demographic. It’s accepted by many people across the board and in many different ways. Until about year and half ago we had been working out of the garage in my house. We were exploding out the seams way past when we should have moved. I am always someone who says, ‘just make it happen.’ That is the way I work: try things and a good amount of stuff doesn’t work, but some things do. Gravitate toward those things and keep having fun with it.”

When YAB got its headquarters building in Avondale, Hoffman met with then-Ald. Deb Mell (33rd ward) and donated a bilingual English/Spanish YAB to Cleveland Elementary School, 3121 W. Byron St. “We wanted to give to this community we were going to be a part of,” he said.

He donates at least one installation a year and at other times has worked at cost, as with Lawrence Hall at-risk youth services, and with Taft High School, where fundraising covered materials and cutting. Contractors who had been renovating the school building off the Kennedy Expressway near O’Hare installed it at no charge.

“I am successful in spite of myself,” he said. “If I could be financially independent, it would be a totally different model. I always give away as much positivity as I can. What I have found – and it has taken me different transformative moments -- if you give away too much everything suffers and you have nothing left for yourself emotionally and financially. It’s all a balance.” With the move to the new building, he is also cognizant of the need to provide employees both careers and benefits, he said. www.streetwise.org

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go for it

Pullman was just months away from becoming a National Monument for its 19th century labor history when Matthew Hoffman, founder and custodian of the You Are Beautiful project, saw its Market Hall and came up with the name, “Go for It,” for his outdoor installation there.

“The project was as DIY as you can get,” said J.B. Daniel, a Chicago public artist with a house, studio and artist residency in Pullman known as “mosnart,” which is “transom backwards,” the idea of art and community flowing back and forth across a threshold. “I don’t think we spent over $3,000 on materials. The community supported it with sweat labor and incredible dinners.”

Craftsmen who had rebuilt Pullman’s red brick-andgreen-wood trimmed Victorian and Queen Anne rowhouses cut 2 x 4s. An architect friend visited on the eve of construction to make sure Hoffman’s 12-foot high by 36-foot wide by 4-foot deep installation weighed no more than 100 pounds at its touch points.

“Pullman is a self-determined community,” Daniel said, “used to doing lots of things.” It’s racially and economically diverse, "millionaires living next to people on assistance.” When Mayor Richard J. Daley wanted to demolish the community in the 1960s and 70s, residents fought back. Their historic preservation efforts paid off on Feb. 19, 2015, when President Obama made Pullman a national monument, to be managed by the National Park Service.

“I think Matthew picked up on that, staying here,” Daniel said. “That’s what I love about the artists residency, staying where the workers stayed.”

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Hoffman volunteered his time and stayed at 11319 S. St. Lawrence, a former cottage for workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company, which built luxury sleeping cars for railroads that crisscrossed the nation. “We would walk out of this cottage every day, but we built this art piece as opposed to railroad cars for George,” Daniel said. The reference is to George Pullman, who owned both the factory and the community, where workers lived, shopped, worshipped (but didn’t drink because Pullman didn’t allow saloons).

After “Go for It” was installed at the Market Hall on Aug. 23, 2014, it evoked both public and private response, Daniel said. “Soon after we put it up, somebody said, ‘you know, I looked at this piece and decided to apply for college.’ She took it as a sign. That’s the wonderful thing about Matthew’s work: these little points of positivity that people can cling to and adapt for themselves.”

“Go for It” was only supposed to be up for a year but remains to this day. After it weathered to grey, Hoffman and Daniel touched it up with wood-tone paint in time for the annual historic Pullman House tour.

Besides the Market Hall, the factory building, the clock tower administration building and the workers’ cottages, Pullman is still a walkable, Gilded Age planned urban community, a departure from the crowded, dirty, working-class districts of its time. But for Daniel, its labor history is more intriguing – and President Obama referenced it in his visit.

He keeps lists of thoughts and ideas, running them through filters to determine the most universal way to say something without being bland and then how it will look when set up. His uses his website, HeyItsMatthew, as a playground for new ideas. His latest message, “We’re All in This Together,” which he placed in the YAB HQ window and then posted on Instagram at the start of the coronavirus shutdown, is simply one he has heard repeated around the world, “a powerful message for this moment.”

During a major recession in 1894, George Pullman reduced workers’ wages – but not the rent and not the store prices he charged them. When a grievance committee visited Pullman, he fired them. As the workers’ condition worsened, they approached Eugene V. Debs, head of the American Railway Union. In June, ARU switchmen refused to add or remove Pullman cars from any trains, tying up railroad traffic across the U.S. But in July, after workers derailed a locomotive attached to a U.S. Mail train, the U.S. attorney general sought an injunction against the strikers. President Grover Cleveland then sent federal troops to enforce the injunction and the strike ended by August.

The neighborhood also includes the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porters Museum, which documents the predominantly African American workers who provided customer service on the luxury trains. In 1925, Randolph organized 500 porters into the first African American union recognized by the AFL. In 1937, it became the first African American union to negotiate with a major corporation, the Pullman Company -- a major civil rights landmark.

For most of the YAB experience, Hoffman was incognito, because he didn’t want the art to be associated with a person.

“Part of me still wishes that was the case. When you see the sticker or an installation, it’s not like, ‘go to this website to learn more.’ When you see this message, there is no background to it. There is nothing you need to do except feel what you need to feel in that moment.”

However, about five years ago, Hoffman had been talking to a business writer, and then attended one of his speeches. The writer talked about pieces Hoffman had done and “accidentally outed” him.

A couple months later, Oprah Winfrey’s people reached out for the SuperSoul Sunday piece. They wanted the focus to be on the artist because it was hard to find information on the works.

“I felt it was important to share so that people know where it comes from, that it is not some weird thing from a corporation,” Hoffman said. “Giving it that context helps more. I might have said no if I hadn’t been accidentally outed, but it seemed like the right time to do it. I always prefer to be behind the scenes, which also goes to my personality.”

The construction of the "Go For It' installation in the historic Pullman district.

Justin Booz participates in the construction of the sculpture (Ben Derico photo); Constucted pieces of the sign are moved from the factory space; The installation receives final touches in its exhibition spot in the remains of Pullman's Market Hall; Matthew Hoffman sits on the completed project.

(All photos provided by Mosnart (JB Daniel.))

THIS PAGE: The installation of the Englewood project (Brian Bonanno photo); Taft High School (photo provided by you-are-beautiful.com.)

A self-described introvert, Hoffman has no inclination to be another Robert Indiana, the creator of the iconic 1970s red/ blue/green LOVE sculpture.

“I love the fact that in our studio and store, people [who] come in either are fans and it’s a destination or they just come by it.

The number one thing is when they say, ‘I have seen this and it brightened my day and I have no idea what it’s about.’ It’s my favorite thing. I don’t need to be famous, but I do love the idea of this message being spread far and wide: the work being known. Who did it is less important to me.” www.streetwise.org

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Special #blacklivesmatter double-sized edition preview The tragic deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and other African Americans and people of color, as well as the ensuing protests, shine a spotlight on the systemic racial injustices that have plagued our community and country.

This special double-edition of StreetWise was previously only available digitally and it is devoted to acknowledging and responding to the anger and grief among the people we seek to serve and the larger community.

Featuring photography of protests by Kathleen Hinkel as well as vendor and community contributions, this will be an edition to hold on to.

StreetWise Vendor Lady David contibutes the opening poem to our #BlackLivesMatter edition, and her he shares yet another poem, as a special preview:

Who Do We Call • When There Is A Rape • When A Body Yells Please Don't Take • Who Do We Call • Who Do We Call • If You Go For A Little Trip • And Your House Is Stripped • Who Do We Call • All Badges Ain't Bad • That Is True • Matter Of Fact A lot Of Coppers • Are Friends Even Families Members Of You • A lot Of The Reasons • Plenty Cops Not On Earth Anymore • They Lost Their Lives • In The Line Of Duty • Fighting A Righteous Way • But We Can't Forget • The Victims Of Cop Violence • He Said: He Couldn't Breathe • Knee On Neck Until Death Silence • The Eric Gardners,

INSIDE STREETWISE

Rodney Kings, Way Too Many To Name • And I Have Stated Go Up A Few Lines,

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All Badges Are Not The Same • So Who Do We Call • When You Remember Your Kid's Kissin' • 72 hours Your Child Is Missin' • Who Do We Call • 5/27/2020

Available in print starting July 20 from your favorite vendor!

Streetwise 5/18/20 Crossword To solve the Sudoku puzzle, each row, column and box must contain the numbers 1 to 9.

Sudoku

Crossword Across

©2020 PuzzleJunction.com

5 Farmer’s calendar 9 Great deal 1 Country club figure 2 Mouth part 3 Used up 5 Banana oil, e.g.

7 Baby elephant 8 Redact 9 Static 0 Emolument 1 Grade 2 Water carrier

7 The “W” in 40 Spanish devil V.F.W. 44 Yoga class need 8 Parachute 46 Greek letter material 49 Ruminant 9 Swerved 51 Cobbler 10 Upscale 53 Piggery 11 To boot 55 Bright star 12 It’s about a foot 57 X out 15 Bow wood 59 Zealous 21 Go straight 62 Vision-related 23 Throng 63 Extract 25 One for the road 64 Elders’ 27 To and ___ teachings 30 Kind of 65 ___ de approval Triomphe 31 Banned wn 66 Vegetate pesticide 1 Tacky?

67 Spicy Mexican 33 Wisecrack 2 Cover story? sauce 3 Solidify 34 Condo division 68 Musical finale 35 Bills 4 Church 70 Watch 36 Switch positions 74 Tiny criticism projection 5 Big citrusCopyright fruit 37 ©2020 Sheltered spot 76 Old French PuzzleJunction.com 6 Alias inits.

38 Test coin

Copyright ©2020 PuzzleJunction.com

©PuzzleJunction.com

Solution LastSudoku Week’s digital edition solutions Solution

Sudoku Solution

Find your nearest StreetWise Vendor at www.streetwise.org

1 Playing marble 4 Delivery inits.

7 Poseidon’s domain 10 Trash bag accessory 13 Freudian topic 14 Upholstery problem 15 QB’s gains 16 Sorceress 17 Brisk, musically 19 Horse of the west 21 Low digits 22 Ball of fat 24 Paddle 25 Former English royal house 26 “Silas Marner” author 28 Gumbo pods 59 The Everly 31 Potting need Brothers, e.g.

33 Earthen pot 61 Sci-fi figures 34 “You betcha!”

63 Actor Nolte 35 Soft shoe 64 Emerald Isle 37 Net-surfer’s 65 Bosses stop 68 Having ghosts 39 Durable wood 70 Intense anger 40 Arrangement 71 Have a tab type 72 “___ magic!”

43 Hearty 73 Byrnes of “77 condiment Sunset Strip” 45 Honey maker 74 Walker, briefly 46 Modify 75 Switch 48 Brouhaha positions 49 Greek vowel 76 Irish Sea feeder 50 Audio effect 77 Tofu base 52 Cozy retreat 55 1993 Kevin Down Kline, Sigourney 1 Substantial Weaver 2 Homes with comedy domes 57 Eye drops 3 Ravel classic

©2020 PuzzleJunction.com

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 18 20 23 27 29 30 32 36

Joule fraction Sad song Artemis’s twin Representative Dean’s e-mail address ender Mgr.’s aide Expression of gratitude Golfer Woosnam Pudding ingredient Resident of 2 Down Chinese ideal Perfume ingredients Golden Horde member Gather “Don’t ___!”

Old stories West Pointer

38 English prep school 40 Greek salad cheese 41 Puffed up, like bread 42 Driving necessities 44 Gothenburg locale 45 Hospital unit 47 Bangkok native 51 Fancy flower 53 Hotel offerings 54 Shipworm 56 Catchall abbr.

58 Large edible ray 60 Lingerie item 62 “Scram!”

65 Not square 66 Refinable rock 67 Possess 69 Apply

How StreetWise Works

Our Mission

Orientation Participants complete a monthlong orientation, focusing on customer service skills, financial literacy and time management to become a badged vendor.

Financial Literacy Vendors buy StreetWise for $0.90, and sell it for $2. The profit of $1.10 goes directly to the licensed vendor for them to earn a living.

Supportive Services StreetWise provides referrals, advocacy and other support to assist participants in meeting their basic needs and getting out of crisis.

S.T.E.P. Program StreetWise’s S.T.E.P. Program provides job readiness training and ongoing direct service support to ensure participants’ success in entering the traditional workforce.

THE PLAYGROUND

To empower the entrepreneurial spirit through the dignity of self-employment by providing Chicagoans facing homelessness with a combination of supportive social services, workforce development resources and immediate access to gainful employment.

Puzzle

Solutio

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WHERE THE PROTESTS END, OUR WORK MIZ MARTHA WASHINGTON BEGINS. 50% O

PREV

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THE CHICAGO PREMIERE

THE MOST SPECTACULARLY LAMENTABLE TRIAL OF James Ijames Directed by Whitney White By

The recently widowed “Mother of America”—attended to by the very enslaved people who will be free the moment she dies—takes us deep into the ugly and thorny ramifications of America’s original sin.

For nearly a century, we’veRADICALLY been working VULNERABLE, to promote racial justice. Help us achieve OUTRAGEOUSLY HILARIOUS it once and for all.

UntilJusticeJustIs.org

APRIL 2 – MAY 17 | steppenwolf.org | 312-335-1650 MAJOR PRODUCTION SPONSOR

2019/20 GRAND BENEFACTORS

2019/20 BENEFACTORS