Can an open mic spark a cease re over Memorial Day weekend?
Books not bullets
sides
By JESSICA MORD Staf
Last year, 41 people cago over Memorial Day weekend. Ten were fatal shooting city’s violence And ten of those people either Austin or North Lawndale, with one fatality in Austin and three in North Lawndale.
Chicago’s West Side is attempting to get that number to spoken word poet helping with the ef fort
Over Memorial Day weekend, Gharreau is hosting a free poetry and comedy open mic at a different location every day. On May 24, that will be at 1807 S. Kostner Ave. in North Lawndale. Attendees will include Congressman Danny Davis, Cook County Commissioners Tara Stamps and Michael Scott Jr., plus Ald. Monique Scott and Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. The programming on May 23 and 25 takes place on Chicago’s South Side, and May 26’s event is held downtown.
All artists are welcome to show up and perform – including poets, comics, visual artists, dancers and musicians – so long as they don’t include any explicit lyrics. The Memorial Day weekend programming serves as a creative, safe space, protecting attendees from violence elsewhere in the city.
“Violence is the voice of the unheard. When you don’t express yourself creatively, you tend to express yourself violently,” Gharreau told Austin Weekly News. “The ceasefire is the umbrella, but the message is peace, love and forgiveness.”
est Side educator and writer Creola Thomas is eating an interactive xperience to accompany stor ytime for children
By JESSICA MORDACQ Staff Reporter
Local teacher and author Creola Thomas is works of fiction into an engaging, inexperience for Austin children. at 11 a.m. on June 28 at the North Austin branch of the Chicago Public Library, Thomas is launching an updated version of Books Not ogramming designed to make readengaging for kids. Though Thomas has previously hosted readings of excerpts from her ooks, this will be the first time she’s inviting other artists to join her and enhancing the experience for young people through music, dancing and costumes.
The North Austin branch library is at 5724 W. North Ave.
“It’s not just a reading series. This is making reading engaging through music, through acting, through role-playing,” Thomas, who teaches at DRW Colle ge Prep in North Lawndale, told Austin Weekly News.
Thomas was inspired to start Books Not Bullets from her own childhood relationship with literature. She grew up in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green
ANTHONY PEREZ
rony m on Kweisi Gharreau’s T-shirt stands for Drive, Ownership, Power, Enlightenment
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e One Lake burger
Reader-suggested recommendation of favorite dish, with ‘all the right avors’
By RISÉ SANDERS-WEIR Contributing Reporter
Reader L aura Milewski wrote in with a suggestion for her favo rite dish, asking whether a b elove d burg er would q ualify for this serie s. Yes! is the answe r. An food that i nspires love, appreciation, p assion is welcome whether it ’s high-faluti n or down-home
What gets Milewski and her family’s stomachs growling is the pub burger at One Lake Brewing, One Lake St. in Oak Park.
“It’s a great flavor to it,” Milewski said. “I also appreciate eating it here. This is one of my favorite spots in town. But the burger itself – it’s got all the right flavors. It’s very balanced.”
“That burger has not really changed since we opened almost six years ago,” said Shawn Stevens, co-owner of One Lake Brewing. “It’s been our most popular seller from the beginning. And we just try and complement the menu around it.”
Line cook Michael Hase gawa and the burger share the same start date at the restaurant. When first asked, Hase gawa didn’t know what to showcase about what makes this version of an American standard special, but he quickly warmed to the task.
“Burgers are gonna be beef on a bun,” he said. “But we do use Slagel Far ms beef which is a local farm. It’s a good quality beef, no hormones. They grow the beef, but they also grow the feed for the beef. We get the patties once a week. They’re never frozen, they’re fresh and the bread is also a local product.”
A standard order gets two 4 oz patties, though Milewski orders a Beyond Meat patty for hers. Her husband orders and enjoys the beef version.
What else cozies up between the buns? Not commercial ketchup. One Lake’s chefs make theirs in house.
“Tomato jam. Yeah, well, it is kind of a fancy ketchup,” Hase gawa said. “We take
onions, caramelize those good. We add in roasted red bell peppers and crushed tomatoes and let that cook. It kind of thickens up a bit and then blend it.”
Other standard ingredients get upgrades too: house-made aioli, local white cheddar, arugula, fried shallots and pickles from Opportunity Knocks (a local nonprofit that makes pickles as a part of its work to enrich and empower people with intellectual and developmental differences).
“I personally make a lot of modifications to my food. I’m one of those people,” Milewski said. “With this burger, there’s not really a whole lot I need to change about it. It’s that good and I don’t say that about a lot of items.”
Her one modification is an egg that puts this burger over the top.
“Yeah, I love the added egg. The egg just kind of tops it of f perfectly. It’s juicy. It kind of falls out of the burger. It’s messy like a burger should be.”
– Tuesday Closed Wednesday 4 to 9 p.m. Thursday – Friday 4 to 10 p.m. Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Milewski says she and her family come to the restaurant sometimes twice a week.
“It’s not only the burg er; it’s ambiance,” she said. “It’s a local place. I like to support local.”
If you have a favorite dish that you’d like to see featured, drop us a line at eats@oakparkeats.com.
AU STIN WEEKLY news
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Jessica Mordacq Reporting Fellow Ananya Chandhok
Editor Donna Greene
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RISÉ SANDERS-WEIR
Laura Milewski and her egg-topped burger.
OPEN MIC
Aiming for a cease re
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Gharreau is based on Chicago’s South Side, where he’s principal partner and brand strategist at kgPR. He started ceasefire ef for ts last year after moving back to Chicago from Los Angeles, where he has several kgPR clients. But the idea started long before that.
Years ago, Gharreau said Brenda Matthews, a poet who passed in 2014, gathered a handful of poets after a couple of kids were killed on the West Side.
“We did poetry on the block on Friday and Saturday for a couple of weeks, and that mitigated or prevented the shootings. The idea came back when I was living in Hollywood. I would see the national, horrific news re garding the gun violence during Memorial Day holiday weekend and how historically it has become the most violent weekend in the city of Chicago,” Gharreau said. “My work takes me to the West Side because, unfortunately, it’s affected by gun
violence on a day-to-day basis.”
According to the city’s violence reduction dashboard, 2,815 people were victims of Chicago shootings last year. Though that number is down from 2,943 in 2023, Austin and North Lawndale remain the two Chicago neighborhoods with the highest number of shootings.
Austin saw 227 shooting victims in 2023 and 203 last year. The next highest number of shooting victims in 2023 was 166 in North Lawndale. That number was down to 150 last year.
While those are annual average numbers, there are typically more shootings in Chicago in the summertime. Of the 393 shooting victims Austin and North Lawndale saw in 2023, 199 or about half of the shootings occur red between May 1 and Sept. 1. Of the 353 shootings last year in those neighborhoods, 190 occurred in that time frame – nearly 54%.
Over Memorial Day weekend in 2023, there were 51 shootings with 13 people killed – one of the most violent Memorial Day weekends to date in Chicago.
“People had some push back and said, ‘This is Chicago. This is a concrete jungle of all concrete jungles. Ceasefires tend to not work here,’” Gharreau said of his ini-
Senior Auditor, Chicago, IL Dvlp guideline re auditing process & procedures; interface & communicate w/ clients to obtain audit recrds & info; participte in risk assessmnt & provide risk eval opinions; analyze account books & financial docs to assess financial condition & identify audit issues; analyze audit requirmnts & plan audit process; exam audit records to ensure compliance w/ laws & regs; prep audit reports to identify & mitigate risks; oversee planning of audit projects & work on clients’ engagmnts to provide service delivery; inspect audit & accounting sys for efficiency & data integrity.
tial ef for ts last year. He credits marketing, radio interviews and prayer in reducing the citywide number of shooting victimizations from 51 in 2023 to 41 in 2024.
Also last year, the Westside Block Club Association organized a gang truce from May to September among four of the six street organizations on Chicago’s West Side to encourage a summer ceasefire.
Gharreau’s spoken word
Gharreau started writing poetry to cope with the death of his younger brother, James Lemar Ford, whose nickname was Lemont. Gang members killed Lemont in 1992 when he tried to protect a teenage girl from being kidnapped. After his brother’s execution, Gharreau struggled with grief and suicidal thoughts until he had a spiritual moment that led him to forgive his brother’s killers – who were sentenced to life in prison – through spoken word poetry.
When Gharreau shared his work in poetry readings to process Lemont’s death, people encouraged him to keep sharing his story.
“The loss of my brother was overwhelming, and poetry became the only way I could process the pain,” Gharreau said in a previous article reported by the Austin Weekly News. “It allowed me to express my emotions instead of holding them in, and as I shared my work, others encouraged me to keep going, which helped me find my voice.”
Since he started performing spoken word poetry, Gharreau has found success across the city and beyond Gharreau is currently Poet in Residence at Gallery Guichard in Bronzeville. He performs frequently on the city’s South
and West Sides, including at several high schools. Gharreau previously hosted regular poetry readings at Afrika West Bookstore on the West Side. Last year, he spoke at the nonprofit Build, the GoChiLife DNC block party, and Chicago Teachers Union’s back-toschool jam.
Gharreau’s spoken word single “One Shot Away” was nominated for the 2024 Grammy’s merit award for Best Song for Social Change.
On May 23, those who wish to participate in the open mic ceasefire will meet at 6500 S. Racine Ave. in Englewood’s Ogden Park from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. The May 24 event will take place at 1807 S. Kostner Ave. from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. May 25 programming is at 10456 S. Halsted St. from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., and May 26’s is at 219 S. Dearborn St. from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
PROVIDED
One of Creola omas’ recent books, “Adventures with the Shortiez: Portal to the Unknown World,” is a young adult fantasy novel about West Side middle-schoolers.
CREOLA THOMAS
Books Not Bullets
from page 1
neighborhood, where she said reading helped her to escape.
“The portal to other worlds came through books. That altered my view on life because I felt hopeless. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re never going to get out of this, you’re just not smart enough, you’re just a lot of ‘nots,’” Thomas said. “I know that books can open up doors to a whole new way of seeing and viewing things.”
Thomas attended Edward Jenner Elementary in Cabrini-Green and later taught there alongside Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson before moving to the West Side to continue teaching. Throughout her career, Thomas has found herself drawn to helping children with learning difficulties.
“I really have a passion for teaching kids that have problems with reading and writing because I kind of struggled in that area myself growing up, and because I was a quiet kid, it was unrecognized for a while,” Thomas said. “Even though I love to write – that’s a part of my passion – my greatest passion is to see kids read again.”
Books Not Bullets is partnering with Chicago Public Schools’ Faith-Based Initiatives, which will be providing free books to give to children who attend programming. The libraries are largely responsible for bringing kids to Books Not Bullets. For
example, on July 16 at the Austin branch, the reading experience will take place during the library’s day camp.
Thomas said she hopes to put on Books Not Bullets at the Douglass branch library, her own Chicago Public Library location, later this year, and bring it to the King branch library on Chicago’s South Side in August.
Though Thomas will read excerpts from her own stories at Books Not Bullets, she’ll also turn other authors’ works into interactive performances.
Thomas has written five books. Her latest one, “Stop Being Weird: 5 Simple Steps Toward Wholeness for Christian Singles,” came out last month. Through narratives, the book offers guidance on how to be at peace without a significant other. Thomas reads excerpts from the book every Sunday at her church.
Thomas was writing one of her young adult fantasy books when one of her students at DRW Colle ge Prep was killed. In honor of that 14-year-old, and several other students that were killed at her school, Thomas launched Books Not Bullets.
The most recent of these, “Adventures with the Shortiez: Portal to the Unknown World,” is the third in the series and follows West Side middle schoolers who find themselves in trouble before discovering access to a supernatural world.
Also, as a part of Books Not Bullets, Thomas is hosting a competition to give away a free laptop or two. Anyone who reads Thomas’ books, which are in Chicago Public Libraries, and completes a form online, will be entered to win a computer.
West Side authors reunite at Legler Library
May 24 event features founding members of the former West Side Writers Guild
By MICHAEL LIPTROT Block Club Chicago
An upcoming event at Legler Re gional Library will highlight the lesser-known and undocumented history of West Side writers and literature.
“Our Westside Story: Preserving Our History,” a monthly listening series presented by Le gler Re gional Library artistin-residence Kenn Cook Jr., will focus on the West Side Writers Guild at this month’s event. It will take place May 24 beginning at 2 p.m. in the library’s community room at 115 S. Pulaski Road. It is open to the public
The guild, which for med in 1990 and disbanded in 1996, featured West Side authors, editors and poets who worked to promote
West Side-focused creativity, helping define the area’s identity, founder Mark Allen Boone said.
“We for med this group so we could encourage other like-minded writers to tell our stories on the West Side,” Boone said. Boone, born and raised on the near West Side close to the Henry Horner Homes, always had a talent for writing, he said. After graduating from University of Illinois Chicago and becoming a West Side public school teacher, Boone was inspired to consider a writing career during a visit in the early 1970s to Legler, his neighborhood library. There, he found Cyrus Colter’s “The Beach Umbrella and Other Short Stories,” a collection of 18 stories about everyday life on the South Side.
“I thought, if you could do this for the South Side, there needs to be somebody to
suit Academy aims to be a learning oasis
CJA uses hybrid model to ll an educational gap on the West Side
By TOM HOLMES Contributing Reporter
You might call the Chicago Jesuit Acad), located at 5058 W. Jackson Blvd. Columbus Park, an educational oasis on Chicago’s West Side.
Testing results reveal that 97% of CJA students — 72% of whom come from the Austin, Garfield Park or Lawndale neighborhoods — completed the 2023-24 school year testing above, on or within one grade of their level in math, even though 33% of these same students began the year two or ade levels behind, whereas only 1% and 2% of the students at the public schools closest to CJA tested proficient in those subjects in 2023-24.
CJA alumni are 7.3 times more likely to earn a post-secondary credential within six years of their high school graduation compared with their peers on the West
Side who attend Chicago Public Schools. And tuition at CJA is free; students get breakfast and lunch at no cost; and the school accepts incoming students — the school starts at third grade level — on a first-come, first-served basis and is not academically selective.
Where CJA is selective is giving priority to children who qualify for free or reduced meals in school. According to their website, “We accept students in all grades without re gard to race, ethnicity or religion.”
What is the for mula?
Longer school days: A typical day starts at 7:50 a.m. and ends at 4:05 p.m. The 2025-26 school year begins with a three-week (July 7-25) mandatory summer session in which students get to know their teachers and classmates, get to know CJA, get at least an hour of math and an hour of reading each day, and often go on weekly field trips.
Academic rigor: CJA does not consider grades for acceptance. “Several of our students,” the website explains, “may come into CJA a grade level or two behind and our goal, using our supports, is to help the student be on or above grade level by 7th
TODD BANNOR
Chicago Jesuit Acadamy bo ’ t class on May 6.
TODD BANNOR
CJA girls’ classroom.
TODD BANNOR
CJA alum Shermar Price (right) with current students.
and 8th grade … we try to meet our students where they are at and continue to push them to achieve their greatness. We aim for rigorous academics for all.”
CJA administers the iReady test three times a year; the results in reading and math are immediately available, which enables teachers to take action right away to
support students.
Supports: Each class is limited to 24 students with two teachers per class, a 12:1 ratio. This same co-teacher structure applies to specials like music, art, and gym as well. The faculty includes four social workers, three learning interventionists, a speech/language pathologist
and a full-time nurse. All students get free breakfast, lunch, and snack.
Co-Curricular: Required and scheduled twice a week, they include full-pads lacrosse (including for girls), track, a bike club, girls volleyball, girls cheer, flag football, culinary arts, music taught by two professional jazz musicians (Google Marques Carroll), board games club, agriculture club and art club.
Faith-based: CJA presents itself as a school for students who want a faith-based environment, without attempting to convert anyone.
“The Jesuits,” explains David Zalesky, director of Student Recruiting and Compliance, “have an overarching theme of helping our students become “people for others.” We do not have a specific religion class right now, but CJA does reinforce the Jesuit values daily: Loving, Religious, Open to Growth, Committed to Doing Justice for Others, and Seeking Intellectual Excellence.
“The entire school has a chapel service — not a Mass — every Friday. We read scripture and have a message from a staff member, a student group, or an alumnus. Sometimes, a whole class will give the ser mon/message Our music teachers play trumpet and piano; sometimes our social worker joins on bass guitar. It is a time for community. We do pray at the start of most classes and lunch, as a social-emotional centering time and a community building routine as well.”
The student body is 34% Baptist, 24% other Christian, 15% Roman Catholic, and 27% other or not reported
Social/leadership skills: When visitors appear at a classroom door, a designated student will get up from his/her desk, shake hands with the visitor, say why they like the school and engage in conversation.
CJA serves meals family-style, with white tablecloths and silverware. When the students are done, they bus their food, roll up the tablecloths, and sweep the floor
State of the art: A new $35 million, 50,000-square-foot expansion, dedicated in 2023, was added to the existing building on the campus which was purchased from the Archdiocese of Chicago and was for merly used as the Resur rection Parish school.
Because CJA believes in a hybrid model — combining a single-gender model with a coed environment — the expansion allowed CJA to admit girls for the first time in 2023. The boys attend classes on the second floor and the girls on the third.
Of the 318 youth currently in the study body 198 are boys and 120 are girls.
Parents: CJA’s website states that the primary factor regarding academic achievement of children is their parents.
Money: CJA receives no county, state, or federal money. Except for meal reimbursements for the breakfasts, lunches, and snacks, every other penny comes from donors.
The 2023 CJA annual report said that the cost per student was $29,500. According to the website Illinois Report Card, Chicago Public Schools spent $25,469 per student in FY 2023.
TODD BANNOR Jazz Combo Director Marques Carroll with the Jazz Combo.
TODD BANNOR
Dave Zalesky with Class of 2012 plaque.
TODD BANNOR
(Le to right) Director of Stude nt Recruitment and Compliance Dave Zalesky, Programs Assistant Prince Br unt, Instructional Assistant Jason Williams (in wheelchair), and Programs Assistant Alzario Palmer
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