W E D N E S D A Y
May 22, 2019 Vol. 39, No. 42 ONE DOLLAR @oakpark @wednesdayjournal
JOURNAL of Oak Park and River Forest
Fenwick girls wins regional Sports, page 47
Tabula not ‘OK,’ OPRF will reprint School board votes to expend $53,794 to remove images By MICHAEL ROMAIN Staff Reporter
Oak Park and River Forest High School will reprint the “Tabula” yearbook after discovering that the book “contained 18 photos of clubs or teams in which students of various races, ethnicities, genders, and grades” made the upside-down OK hand gesture, which in recent months has been co-opted by people on the far right as a symbol of white supremacy. The decision has touched off a debate among community members about how they should navigate in a culture where acts of racism are becoming increasingly vague and ambiguous by design. During a special meeting on May 20 — where aspects of that debate were on full display — the District 200 school board voted 4-2 to reprint the 2018-19 yearbook, without the images, at a cost of $53,794. Board members Craig Iseli, Sara Spivy, Gina Harris and Jackie Moore voted in favor of reprinting the books while members Tom Cofsky and Matt Baron voted against the measure. Board member Ralph Martire was absent. The 1,750 books, which cost students $45 each to purchase and were paid for in advance, were originally scheduled to be distributed this week. During the May 20 meeting, D200 Supt. Joylynn PruittAdams said the cost of reprinting and shipping the modified yearbooks, which will take about three to See YEARBOOK on page 16
ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer
MENTOR: Angalia Bianca was arrested more than 125 times in her life. The Forest Parker’s work as a Chicago violence interrupter has now been recognized by a United Nations affiliate group, City of Chicago, National Association of Social Workers and more.
Violence interrupter releases new book on life “In Deep” explores local resident’s self-destructive childhood
By NONA TEPPER Staff Reporter
By the time Angalia Bianca entered Oak Park and River Forest High School, she had been doing drugs since she was 9. The gifted student, bored in class and always getting in trouble with her family, was told by teachers that she was too smart for her own good. After a few
years, Bianca dropped out and moved on to a life of drugs, gangs and prison time. “I lived this life for 36 years and, moving on, I just went deeper and deeper into hell,” she said. Now of Forest Park, Bianca is a data specialist and violence interrupter for Cure Violence, previously known as CeaseFire, an anti-violence program at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC)
that was the subject of the 2011 documentary, The Interrupters. Bianca, along with writer Linda Beckstrom, recently released a book about her life titled, In Deep: How I Survived Gangs, Heroin, and Prison to Become a Chicago Violence Interrupter, which details her time in Oak Park and Forest Park — where she now See INTERRUPTOR on page 15