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Just west of Torrence Avenue, 134th Street acts as a divide. To the south, the fringes of a junkyard gradually merge with warehouses and factories. Some of the street signs are hand-painted. There are cattails and prairie grasses that soar 12 feet into the air. A few feet away, a rusted-out shell of a car frame sits among tree trunks, its seats mustard-yellow. Deer tracks sidestep the jagged pieces of metal that protrude through the snow—remnants of long-gone industry. Coyotes and dogs pick their way through the discarded boats from the neighboring Calumet River.

To the north, Hegewisch Marsh stretches off into the distance. Given its polluted state, the wildlife doesn’t seem to notice where the nature reserve ends and the abandoned block to the south begins. Deep in the marsh, the only sign of the city is a deep rumble of distant traffic and the occasional whistle of a freight train. Soon the whistling trains, howling canines, and fragile snatches of birdsong will likely be accompanied by the not-so-distant refrain of hollow-point bullets.

On January 5, the board of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) held a meeting regarding the future of a plot directly across the river from the marsh. The MWRD voted five-to-four to issue a 39-year lease to the Chicago Police Department for a site near 2025 E. 134th Street. Using money from a federal narcotics forfeiture fund, the department intends to build a new training facility that will include an outdoor gun range.

The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District is an independent governing and taxing body in Cook County. The MWRD, which treats wastewater and controls stormwater for several million people, owns several thousand acres in the Calumet region. In recent decades, it has managed the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan, better known as the Big Tunnel Project—a multi-billion-dollar network of tunnels and reservoirs meant to improve floodwater management and reduce sewage pollution of local waterways. This most recent decision signals a big change.

In recent months, the proposed gun range has faced opposition from various environmental groups who argue that the noise of gunfire will disrupt both visitors and endangered birds at the marsh. The groups are concerned that the gun range will be too close to the marsh, which is in the process of being restored as part of the mayor’s Millennium Reserve Project. Despite the Millennium funding, the proposed range has now received Mayor Emanuel’s public support. Emanuel maintains that the facility is not “in contradiction to what we’re trying to do in Millennium.”

But in the Calumet region of Chicago’s Southeast Side, it wouldn’t be unusual for the city to renege on its promises. The forces of industry, commerce, and local government have quite literally reshaped the earth here, draining wetlands and displacing neighborhoods with impunity. Even today, the power politics of Cook County are clear enough: cops trump birds.

More troubling than this, the surrounding neighborhoods and the people who live in them seem to matter less to officials than the wetlands and the ecotourists they are intended to draw. Tom Shepherd, a lifelong resident of the area and longtime activist with the Southeast Environmental Task Force (SETF), opposes what he sees as a more general disregard for the Southeast Side: “Some people are of the opinion that because we are largely contaminated that they can come down here and locate any sort of dirty business down here. We’re trying to maintain a reasonable standard of living.” Shepherd worries that the gun range symbolizes a lack of commitment to the environmental restoration promised by the Millennium Reserve Project.

The space near 2025 E. 134th Street was last used by a contractor working on the Big Tunnel during the early 2000s. Today, the site is marked as a green space as part of the Calumet Area Land Use Plan, adopted by the Chicago Plan Commission in March of 2004. This plan seeks to promote the redevelopment of underused industrial spaces and restore drained wetland basins, forests, and historic prairies while linking these sites to existing conservation lands, such as Wolf Lake and the Indiana Dunes region

This plan was supported by—among others—the city and state government, various Aldermen, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Forest Preserve District, and the MWRD, with the consultation of the Openlands Project and the SETF. The more recent Millennium Reserve Project, unveiled by Governor Quinn and Mayor Emanuel in December, is an attempt to facilitate the accomplishment of the Calumet Area Land Use Plan goals. Several million dollars of federal funding have been earmarked to push ahead with the marsh restoration.

Despite its isolation and relative underuse, the site near 2505 E. 134th Street is far from pristine. Ringed on three sides by capped landfills, massive terraced mountains of the city’s garbage, it has been indirectly or directly polluted for years. Terrance O’Brien, chairman of the MWRD, noted that an environmental investigation of the property “revealed the presence of soil and groundwater contamination,” including semi volatile organic compounds and metals.

O’Brien, who voted for the proposed facility, points out that the lease would require the City to monitor groundwater at the site and prevent further contamination. “There will be improvement to the quality of the land,” he claims.

When asked about alternative locations for the gun range, O’Brien emphasized that this site was the only one offered. As for the possibility of a suburban range, O’Brien said that the CPD wanted a facility within city limits “to prevent excess travel by their officers for training.”

The department’s supposed concern with travel costs is belied by the chosen site’s isolation; the site at 2025 E. 134th Street is located over 20 miles south of the police academy at 1300 W. Jackson Boulevard, roughly the same distance from the academy as suburban Downers Grove. But the proposed site seems to be supported by both municipal bureaucrats and workaday cops.

The webmaster of the blog “Second City Cop,” an anonymous Chicago police officer, sees a clear need for an outdoor range: “The ranges we have are literally gas chambers—when they’re up and functional.” The blogger writes, “it’s near impossible to run 12,000 officers [through] a suburban range,” especially when those suburban communities have to train their own police forces.

”Second City Cop” also claimed that noise from the site would be negligible, and agreed with other online commentators who had argued that, in light of the recent legalization of handgun ownership in the city, the range should be accessible to civilians: “[The range] would probably end up paying for itself in short order.” As it stands, the site will only serve the CPD, Homeland Security, and possibly suburban police departments.

Speaking on behalf of several officials in the mayor’s office, city spokesperson Eve Rodriguez would not provide <i>the Chicago Weekly</i> with information on projected noise levels from the facility or comment on the possibility of an alternative site, noting that the training facility was still being developed. Like O’Brien and the “Second City Cop” blogger, she underscored the need for an outdoor facility.

But among the critics of the site, no one seems to oppose an outdoor range in general. “I see the need for an outdoor firing range,” said MWRD board member Debra Shore, who voted against the lease proposal. But they also stress that the proposed location is an important habitat for migratory birds. When the police only offered one site, the MWRD found that its hands were tied.

In April, the MWRD asked the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to carry out a survey of the area’s wildlife. Six black-crowned night herons—an endangered species—were identified. Because they found no nests, the state did not register an objection to the project. However, the survey also noted that a longer-term, specialized study would be needed in order to determine the impact that gun noise might have. According to Carolyn Marsh of the Audubon Society, during a recent Christmas bird count two bald eagles were spotted. While no longer endangered, the bald eagle is protected under the Migratory Bird Act Treaty. Without thorough, extended sound study, no one can predict how these birds will be affected.

Some wonder why the gun range site is no longer slated for restoration. “It is pretty remote, and it’s pretty degraded. But parts of it have vegetation and could be restored,” said Shore. Since the police have taken an interest, the original restoration plan appears to have been abandoned, and the range seems increasingly like a foregone conclusion. At this stage, three more City Council committees will review the proposal before the full council votes. Spokesperson Rodriguez estimates that this will take roughly four months. Although the lease may be rejected or curtailed at one of the upcoming stages, Shore seems resigned to the gun range: “Each step of the way, I think it’s going to get harder.”

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Roughly two blocks south of 135th, a pirate sculpted from scrap metal points the way to the M&M Windjammer, a nautical-themed bar which overlooks the Calumet River. In January, the docks of the river are flanked by tarp-covered boats and an unlit neon palm tree stapled to a telephone pole. Just across the water, behind the snowy bluffs of a capped landfill, lies the gun range site.

Inside the Windjammer, no one particularly seems to care about the gun range. Squiggy, a man playing video poker at a machine near the door, knew that the range was coming, but not when. “I go shooting, too,” he said, before turning back to his video poker machine.

Neighborhoods like South Deering and Hegewisch grew up around factories and railroads. Although the area had long supported a variety of industrial uses, by the mid-twentieth century, US Steel and other steelworks had become the region’s economic base. But during the 1970s and ’80s, the American steel industry collapsed, and people began to leave.

Nowadays, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, the economy in Hegewisch is heavily dependent on casinos across the Indiana border. Tom Shepherd of the SETF has seen the area change: “Wisconsin Steel, Republic Steel, Acme Steel are all gone,” he notes. Other companies, including Pullman Locomotive, Electro-Motive Diesel, and Sherwin-Williams, have also shut down or moved, taking with them thousands of jobs.

Although the steel mills have mostly left, traces of them remain. In the Calumet Region, what at a distance might be meadow turns out to be a junkyard, and ragged forests cloak the detritus of heavy industry.

About a mile north of 2025 E. 134th Street lies the 87-acre Lake Calumet Cluster, chosen by the EPA as a Superfund Redevelopment site in 2000. Slag dumping and other industrial practices left a robust mix of contaminants in the cluster, including lead, chloroform, PCBs, and arsenic. The Dutch Boy Superfund site (described in an EPA fact sheet as a “former lead and lead-based paint manufacturing facility”) is also nearby.

Across the Indiana border, industrial suburbs that were once beacons of progress (Josef Stalin proudly boasted that the city of Magnitogorsk’s production output was equal to Gary) now command six EPA National Priorities List sites within a radius of roughly two miles. Shepherd himself first got involved in SETF while opposing the use of a Waste Management-owned incinerator to burn hazardous materials; these actions, though in violation of the company’s permit and eventually discontinued, were clearly in keeping with historical precedent.

* * * *

Traveling through this region, it takes a great deal of faith in the power and virtue of government to imagine something like the Millennium Reserve succeeding. Nature has returned to the area by default rather than by design.

A few miles east of Lake Calumet, Wolf Lake spills out across the Indiana border. While Lake Calumet has been radically expanded, contracted, alkalified, and acidified by over a century of changing industrial interests, Wolf Lake is relatively healthy—at least where it isn’t crossed by I-90 or filled in with ferrous slag. Power lines and smokestacks jut out above its eastern shore, but on the relatively bucolic Chicago side, a whiting of swans has settled near a cluster of ice fishing shanties.

A few ice fishermen watch the swans, but most focus on drilling through the surface and dropping in their lines. One fisherman, bundled up in arctic exploration gear, hadn’t heard anything about the range. “I’m not from around here,” he said, turning back towards the lake. Startled by encroaching humans, the swans scatter, settling a few hundred yards away. The fishermen keep drilling.

The city hopes to create such a scene in the marshlands, but it’s unclear whether this kind of tranquility can exist with a gun range next door.

Tyler Leeds

Bruce Taylor began the first day of class by asking his nine students why they were given their first names. “I was named Joy,” responded one student, “because my daddy said I brought joy into his life.” After two beats of respectful silence a single giggle escaped from someone’s mouth. The class erupted in laughter. Taylor moved on to the next student.

“My grandma and my mom named me Ashley because they didn’t want stereotypes thrown upon the family,” answered another student. “Instead of being called a black name, they chose a common name so that unless I told someone my race no one would know.” This time no one laughed. Instead, a few hands crept toward the book lying on everyone’s desk—Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” Taylor was unfazed, and moved on to the next student. Ashley’s response was exactly what he was looking for.

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The students all came from King College Prep in Kenwood, one of Chicago Public Schools’ selective-enrollment high schools. They had come to a classroom on the University of Chicago campus to participate in an enrichment program called Living Bookshelf. The program, created by Taylor, attempts to push student engagement with the arts beyond plot quizzes and reviews. In Taylor’s classroom, the students were pushed to emotionally identify with Ellison’s work. In preparation for their first session, the class attended Court Theatre’s production of the “Invisible Man”—the novel’s first theatrical adaptation.

After four two-hour sessions of discussion and collaboration, the students will have produced their own creative response to Ellison’s novel—a two-scene musical theatre piece exploring the identities of two secondary characters. Mary Ann Ivan, a veteran of Broadway musical pits, will be flown in to compose music to accompany the lyrics the students write. Taylor will then hire professional actors and singers to perform the scenes on stage at Court Theatre as part of the Hyde Park Bank High School Performance Festival on February 24. But before lyrics can be paired with notes, the students have to do some work.

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While Ashley’s response quieted the room, Taylor was just beginning to warm up. At age 65, Taylor is a spry man. He has a mess of grey hair and a full mustache. He speaks with the intonation and cadence of someone used to an audience. As his students sat along narrow tables that formed a hollow rectangle, Taylor ran about in the middle. He never waited for his students to raise their hands. Instead, he would rush up to whoever hadn’t spoken in awhile. He would lean across the table and look them in eye and ask, “What do you think?” If they took too long, he would reach across and poke the students gently in the head. Their stunned expressions and indignation didn’t change the fact that Taylor’s enthusiasm was infectious.

Taylor’s first question was intentionally pointed—the history of one’s family and culture are often expressed in one’s name. Taylor’s class contains nine African Americans from the South Side, and he was seeking an emotional avenue into Ellison’s text. “Invisible Man” is the story of an African-American man leaving the South for New York City during the turbulent inter-war years.

After Ashley’s remark, everyone could make out the connection between their own lives and the novel. But how clearly did they see it? While Taylor allowed the power of Ashley’s words to linger in the classroom, he is still, like many great educators, quite demanding. Taylor began to drill his students on the basics.

“Our understanding must begin with context,” Taylor declared. “What is the context of this work?”

“Racism. Those were racist times,” said one student, half as an answer and half as a question.

“Correct, but tell me more,” Taylor pressed. “Tell me specifically. Jim Crow laws have a lot to do with the context of this work. Now, which Jim Crow laws offend you the most, and which offend you the least?”

Taylor marched around the room, passing from student to student. They all had the chance to demonstrate their opinions, with Taylor supplementing their knowledge of history along the way. In this manner, the students not only strengthened their understanding of the text, but also the connection between Ellison’s reality and the South Side today.

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Taylor has a long history with theatres. In the mid-1970s, Taylor was the production stage manager for the Seattle Opera. Under the Carter administration, federal money became available to arts organizations that were willing to bring their programming to public school students. This is where Taylor got his start as an arts educator. To prepare students to experience opera—never an easy task—Taylor was sent to prep classes on what to expect before arriving at the theatre. According to Taylor, “I had done almost everything anyone can do in a theatre, but I found I really enjoyed [teaching] and that I did it well.”

From this beginning, Taylor conceived of a post-viewing session to help students refine their understandings of the performances and to discuss their reactions. But Taylor knew arts education shouldn’t simply work to increase his student’s appreciation of work. He wanted his students to love art with the same intensity he possessed, but he also wanted them to get a job so that they could continue to appreciate the arts. As a result, Taylor claims it is his job to “get kids to really use in their own lives what we in the arts use in our profession. So I thought to myself, ‘What are the habits of mind that artists develop? How do we think? How do we create? How do we work together?’”

The seed of Living Bookshelf was planted, but Taylor still needed inspiration. During this time, Taylor came across the Foxfire Magazine. Created in 1966, “Foxfire” is one of the most prominent examples of 1960s experiential education.

Based out of Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, a private high school in Georgia, “Foxfire” was a student-produced publication that documented the cultural history of the declining Appalachian culture. A collection of the articles was published as a book in 1972, later becoming a national bestseller.

“After reading the Foxfire book,” says Taylor, “I asked myself, Why couldn’t kids do that in the arts?” As a result, Taylor began a program entitled “Creating Original Opera.” As in Living Bookshelf, students were tasked with not only understanding a work—in this case, an opera—but also producing an artistic response to be performed. According to Taylor, “Creating Original Opera” was conducted in over 1000 schools across twelve countries.

But “Creating Original Opera” was always seen as a supplement to his students’ education. While Taylor may wish otherwise, operas never play a central role in primary education. In today’s world, the reaching of national standards in the language arts and mathematics controls school funding. Taylor had to adapt.

“Common Core State Standards dominate primary education. They have been adopted by 46 states. And so I looked at the Common Core requirements, and I thought that I could slightly modify what I do to meet these new requirements,” says Taylor. Living Bookshelf is Taylor’s attempt to meet state education requirements through the arts.

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Taylor recently left the East Coast for Chicago because his wife found a new job. “She makes way more money than I do, so I had to move with her,” he says. “I moved here without a job. I still don’t have a job, but arts education is what I do, so I don’t care if I get paid to do it or not. I like to think that I am my wife’s contribution to the arts.”

Once in Chicago, Taylor got in touch with William Michel, executive director of the UofC’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. Taylor’s current incarnation of Living Bookshelf is being offered through the UofC’s Arts and Public Life Initiative. Taylor had no plans to work with “Invisible Man,” but took advantage of Court Theatre’s production. According to Dara Epison, program coordinator of University and Community Arts Collaborations, “The fact that the students chosen to work with him would have the opportunity to perform their work on Court’s stage with professional actors was simply a result of the stars aligning properly and Court being incredibly supportive.”

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By the end of the first session, the students had had no problem identifying the two characters from “Invisible Man” that they wanted to explore. Selecting the character of Ras, who is loosely based on the Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey, was especially easy. The students were intrigued by the man they interpreted as vengeful, strong-willed, and determined.

In between the end of class and the second session, held last Saturday, the students were tasked with creating a biography for Ras that explained his traits. Whether the result of Taylor’s careful prodding or not, imagination was in strong supply.

“Ras witnessed the murder of his family,” said one student, serious and soft.

“Yeah, his father was betrayed by a white guy involved in the Brotherhood,” whispered another.

As they traced out the source of his anger, Ras’s identity came into focus. He was a poet, and a few years had passed since the time of “Invisible Man.” Ras was now a participant in the Harlem Renaissance—another context for the students to explore.

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Most classrooms don’t work this way. Often, mastering the plot is what matters. It demonstrates a student’s ability to grasp and recall information, as that line of thinking goes. But while Taylor has adapted his project to state requirements, he believes foremost in protecting his students’ futures.

“Plenty of people have iPhones or iPads—if you want to know something, you just look it up,” he notes. “The students of today, if they want to succeed, need to learn how to think and create. They will be paid to be creative. The thing we have to prove, and I want to demonstrate with these kids, is that artists can contribute to student achievement. But we’re not going to succeed by having kids just act, sing, and dance. We have to have them get creative in a way they can apply to an academic subject.”

By leading his students through lyric writing, Taylor hopes to grant his students a command of metaphors—something required for state tests and successful communication. Placing these lyrics atop a melody will be no easy task, but the students still have a few more weeks to prepare. In the end, Taylor’s class will have created something new. This ability—creativity—is at the heart of Taylor’s mission.

“Because of the tests, teachers don’t ask students what they think, they ask what do you know, which isn’t so important. When you ask younger kids what do you think, they freeze. But the jobs out there today are conceptual and creative. The arts can help them think and create.”

Claire Hungerford

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The communal dining room and kitchen at Northwest Mental Health Center has long been a fixture of programming at the clinic. Rosa Torres, who has worked as a clinical therapist at Northwest for 21 years, recalls how busy the kitchen used to be. Many of the clinic’s Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Support (PSR) programs were conducted here, where patients received instruction in meal planning and food preparation. But in recent years the kitchen has been used less and less, since funding for the meals has long since disappeared. Now Torres and her remaining colleagues, who have to wear many hats in their work as therapists and administrators, take turns providing money out-of-pocket for groceries.

Those in Torres’s field use PSR to refer to many of the programs that serve as material and emotional support infrastructure for adults suffering from mental illness–whether chronic or acute. Included in the health center’s PSR offerings are the various group therapy sessions held by clinicians, such as the Spanish-speaking women’s group that Ana Navarro has coordinated for over a decade.

The announcement of Chicago’s 2012 fiscal budget last October sealed the fate of mental health care across Chicago. The city’s outlined plan is to consolidate the clinics—transferring, for example, responsibility for the entire Back of the Yard’s patient population to the Southwest Side’s Greater Lawn Public Health Center. In the context of the prolonged and dramatic decline in mental health resources in Illinois, the measures will prove another painful blow to an already broken system, suffering from a lack of funding and legislative protection, which used to provide some insulation for Illinois’s mentally ill against homelessness and unemployment.

Northwest, which is located in Logan Square, will be merging with the South Side’s Lawndale clinic. Five other clinics will close their doors: Rogers Park, Woodlawn, Auburn Gresham, Beverly-Morgan Park, and Back of the Yards. Chicago will soon be serving upwards of 5,100 patients with a mere six operational clinics—a third as many as were open at the start of Richard M. Daley’s tenure. Since 2009 funding has seen a 36 percent reduction, a cumulative loss of $33.5 million.

The current mental health system has its origin in the Community Mental Health Services Act of 1963 (CMHA), signed into law by President Kennedy. CMHA called for the closure of state hospitals, while providing funding for mental health care at a local level through federal grants. With federal support, community health centers were able to serve as effective primary care providers for the mentally ill. This legislation was part of a national shift—both in public opinion and the field of healthcare—away from health policy that saw inpatient and institutionalized care as the best method of treating mental illness.

Over the past half-century, federal allocations have been starved and legislation distorted into what Mark Heyrman, a professor of law at the University of Chicago who specializes in mental health advocacy, calls “a variety of un-funded, uncoordinated services.” The central deficiency in many respects is a severe lack of human and financial resources, a fact hardly disputable when compared to the Illinois of yesteryear. According to Heyrman, there were 35,000 beds in Illinois available to patients in both outpatient and institutional facilities 60 years ago. Today there are 1,300.

Heyrman believes that successful mental health programs exist—they just haven’t been implemented on a large enough scale in Illinois. One such program is the Assertive Community Treatment, or ACT model. Under this system, patients are provided  “the multidisciplinary, round-the-clock staffing of a psychiatric unit, but within the comfort of their own home and community.” According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, ACT recognizes that “individuals with the most severe mental illnesses are typically not served well by the traditional outpatient model, with various services that the patient must navigate on their own.” Throughout Illinois, ACT is almost nowhere to be found, since it is simply too costly for health providers to offer. Heyrman notes that the number of ACT teams in the state “has declined precipitously as providers have increasingly had to secure funding [outside of their budgets] in order to afford it.”

The consequences of this dearth of resources are perhaps nowhere quite so visible as in city hospitals. Urgent care facilities are increasingly saddled with the severely ill—those who struggle with cyclical but nonetheless debilitating symptoms—and the newly unemployed or homeless. The latter’s need for mental health services would ideally be mitigated by the network of support—as simple as food and cots—that Torres and other long-time clinicians know to be very effective in the treatment and prevention of mental illness.

As the mental health clinics close, these preventative resources—and their benefits—will be in jeopardy. Torres is still shaking her head over the proposal:, “It doesn’t make sense any which way. From a [fiscal] perspective it doesn’t make sense, because of the increased cost of hospitalizations, incarcerations…If people aren’t stable they’re going to lose their jobs, their houses…You’re denying very basic rights.”

For patients, clinicians, and activists alike, the expected drop in quality of care is an unending source of disappointment and frustration. But the defunding is, distressingly, not simply a matter of money drying up. To make matters worse, some say the loss of state dollars is due to gross financial mismanagement.

In February 2008, Illinois’s Department of Human Services was notified of a transition from a state system to a computerized bill payment system provided by a subcontracted tech company, CERNER Corporation. The system was revealed to be largely nonfunctional, as shown in documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act according to the Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers. In the months after its implementation, an overwhelming 95 percent of bills submitted to the state government by the new software were rejected on grounds of missing data.

Because the claims couldn’t be processed, the state’s Division of Mental Health elected to withhold the funding necessary to cover the operational costs of clinics like the soon-to-be terminated Woodlawn Mental Health Center. A spokesman for the Department of Human Services, Tom Green, stated that the decision to cut funding on the order of $1.2 million was based solely on the city’s inability to provide billing data.

Michael Snedeker, who has worked for the Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers since 2008, recounts an incident that could be an omen of what’s to come: when the roof of the Rogers Park Clinic partially collapsed last year, its patients were temporarily directed to the nearest operational mental health center, North River, where they remained under the care of Rogers Park staff. Roughly half of those patients never sought treatment at the stopgap location.

Snedeker regards this figure as a generous estimation of the number of patients who will make it through the transition. For many of the nearly 2,600 current clients whose local clinics will be shuttered, the forced relocation is more than a logistical inconvenience. A longer commute for patients means a hike in the cost of treatment—especially for those who have been unable to secure coverage and who have long relied on the unflagging generosity of therapists like Torres and Navarro.

“We took it as a betrayal,” Torres says of the budget. “They’re annihilating health, period. Not just the clinics. And especially for Ana [Navarro]—she’s been here 27 years, she’s from this community, born and raised, people from her church come here. So it’s also a betrayal of the community, not just of the clients but of their families too.”

Other patients face the possibility of arriving at a new facility where there are no therapists who speak their language. Meanwhile, relationships that have been built over years are likely to end. As Navarro explains, “We’re merging with Lawndale, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Rosa and I will be going to Lawndale.” The city’s transition team hasn’t yet told them when their clinic will close or where they’ll be reassigned, she says.

Torres is most distressed by the uncertain fate of her clients: “We’re staff—we’re used to being tossed around like foster children. But the clients? It’s very humiliating for them…they just want to send ten of them here, move ten over there. And will it be today, or tomorrow, or a week from today?”

Patients’ prospects for dependable treatment will remain bleak as the slated closures take effect, possibly as soon as mid February or March, according to a Greater Lawn clinician. Torres states that just under 40 therapists will be terminated, a figure that does not include the psychiatrists and other clinic staff who will be laid off.

“In terms of the physical size of Chicago alone, six centers is pretty pathetic,” Snedeker says. “And as to the claim that services will be improved, I just don’t see how that’s possible with the reduction in staff that’s taking place.” He foresees a grim landscape of meager mental healthcare resources, which he likens to the food deserts that also plague expanses of the South Side. “Conceivably very soon,” he portends, “in these neighborhoods where resources have been so depleted, a near-absence of care could definitely come about, and I think to a very sobering effect.”

all photos courtesy of Jason Thomas

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If it were up to Pastor Corey Brooks of New Beginnings Church, Chicago would be filled with “contemporary, credible, and creative” neighborhood centers. These spaces would offer everything from job placement services and drug rehabilitation assistance, to green technology labs and Panera Bread franchises. They would be hubs of activity, located at the heart of what are occasionally desolate, run-down neighborhood areas. These centers would represent a solution to youth violence and systemic inequality.

These places don’t exist, but Pastor Brooks hopes to begin to change that in the next 31 days.

As part of an effort called “Project HOOD,” Brooks is living out of a tent atop a Super Motel at 66th and King. Brooks claims the abandoned motel, which was once notorious for gang activity, drug deals, and prostitution, lies within “the highest murder area in the city.”  Located right across the street from New Beginnings Church, the shuttered, run-down building is an eyesore that the pastor hopes to acquire for the community. The letters in the project’s name stand for “helping others obtain destiny,” and with this program, Brooks intends to transform “the hood” into his vision for a new, better Woodlawn.

Brooks has been in the tent all day, every day for—at the time of this article’s publication—43 days. Prior to being raised atop the motel on a scissor lift, the pastor fasted on water and faith alone. He initially attempted to maintain the prohibitions on the roof, but has now taken a more practical approach to survival. He keeps warm with a giant space heater and plenty of company—congregants come to pray with their pastor for success in his mission to change Woodlawn. He sends frequent Facebook and Twitter updates with inspirational messages—“The Kingdom of God never advances without sacrifice. We must inconvenience ourselves to the point of sacrifice even when others call us fools”—and requests for donations. The total has hovered around $200,000 for the past three weeks, but Brooks insists that he will not come down until they reach the full amount of $450,000 required to purchase the Super Motel property.

According to his blog, the reasons for his demonstration are varied, but “the 10 most important reasons are dead, buried 6 feet underground—teenagers, with names and families whose funerals I did this past summer!” Those men, he believes, might still be alive if they had had a place to go in their neighborhood that allowed access to more positive role models. In a phone interview, Pastor Brooks reflected on “the one thing, besides church,” that kept him on “the straight and narrow” growing up. For Brooks “it was a little place called the Multi-Service Center.” According to the pastor, “there were some strong men that taught me there. I was into sports, I was into partying, but this guy constantly challenged me to think. That community center experience helped to mold me into the person I am now.”

In various articles about the project, this new epicenter has been referred to as a “youth center,” a “community center,” and a “community development center.” Brooks has another title in mind: “I almost want to call it the Dream Center. I want the little boy who wants to be a doctor to go and be inspired by meeting a doctor there or reading about a doctor.”

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There are no blueprints or business plans for the project on the table—“that’s for ‘Phase 2,’” he explains—and the funding sources for that process are even more ill defined, but Brooks is committed to raising the amount it would take to purchase the land from the two banks that currently own it. He has plans to one day acquire TIFF funds to attract the commercial investment he hopes will promote Woodlawn’s redevelopment, but at the end of the day, Brooks is a pastor, not a businessman.

Brooks became the head pastor of New Beginnings in 2000, when he founded the church after moving from West Point Church in Bronzeville. He hoped to create a place of worship that was “cutting edge, with a little more flavor.” But the frills are restricted to the congregation’s expressions of faith. His message is simple—unique parish problems require unique solutions. New Beginnings is an unpretentious space with straightforward beliefs. New Beginnings’s 46,000 square-foot space includes a school, gym, recording studio, long front lobby, and enormous sanctuary. There are no gilded baptismal fonts on the floor, and no stained glass panels adorning the walls.

The sanctuary looks a bit like a high-ceilinged convention center. Rows of seats wrap around a long stage where a drum kit stands beside a couple of electric guitars. During services, cameramen film the services for online streaming. Two rows of theater lights hang from the rafters and point at the dozen or so choir members who line the front in their Sunday best.

On the first day of the new year, the church is packed. Though some are certainly fighting off the morning fatigue that comes with January 1, no one is short of energy or passion during the 35-minute introductory songs that start off the day’s service. Bodies sway and palms are lifted up to the ceiling as voices throw a “Hallelujah!” into already ecstatic verses. The tunes are catchy, punctuated by call-and-response choruses. The lyrics are displayed on giant white projector screens hanging above the stage. Behind the pulpit, the leader of the choir repeats until her voice cracks, “there’s NOTHING my GOD cannot DO.” Her arms rise up, inviting the audience toward the crescendo, as she shouts full-voiced, “SING IT LIKE YOU BELIEVE IT!”

After two more songs, and a special guest performance by gospel duo Dawkins & Dawkins, the pulpit prepares the congregation to welcome Pastor Brooks, so he can virtually deliver his sermon from the rooftop. “Receive with me our pastor,” the lead singer requests, giving thanks for “our man of God,” who, the congregation agrees, is “making a change for Chicago and for the world.” Her faith in the pastor is unwavering, and she thanks god again and again “for blessing us with a pastor with a vision.” She asks the crowd to practice rejoicing Brooks’s presence twice before his visage appears on the projector screens, smiling through his winter wear and a spotty Internet connection.

“Whatever you used to get through last year, is not going to work for this year, unless you make adjustments,” he proclaims. “This is a new year of possibilities.” He reminds the church that the future is unknown and unknowable, and will require each person to confront old problems and new problems differently. Continuing, Pastor Brooks recited a loose rendition of Mark 2:22, which contains the passage, “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”

“In 2012,” he says, “He wants you to stretch yourself.” Closing in a prayer, and a request for the worshippers to embrace one another with hugs, the screen turned blank.

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With all of the press that Project HOOD has received in the last month, it’s surprising that Pastor Brooks isn’t more practiced in delivering the facts and details of his plans. When asked about how much money he’s raised so far, his answer is vague: “Around $200,000,” adding, “maybe a little more than that. I know that amount is going to go up, but I haven’t counted recently.” For him the coverage has been both a blessing and a curse. Major headlines in the Chicago Tribune and New York Times have spread the word about the pastor’s mission and led to major individual donations, but the South Sider’s high profile has attracted unwanted help. “The most difficult thing with the media attention has been people who come along to try to attach themselves to your cause. It’s really important to keep your message on point,” says Brooks, who then quotes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “You have to have a tough mind and a tender heart.”

For the pastor, the embodiment of King’s tough-mindedness seems to be his retinue of large, muscular assistants. While the three men standing in the church lobby are warm and personable, you still wouldn’t want to cross them. “They seem like opposites—you’ve got your idealistic view and your realistic view. But you gotta have both,” Brooks says.

When the lights and the cameras are off, the pastor’s live stream stays fixed on the word “OFFLINE” over static color bars. His followers have only the occasional Tweet to divine how Brooks’s mission is coming along—most recently he’s communicated a collection of quotations from figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Cornel West. We can’t watch Pastor Brooks on his spiritual and activist journey, despite his attempts to blog the experience and the mass media attention. But the power of Brooks’s demonstration has almost nothing to do with the quality of his blog posts. People pull all kinds of stuff to get media attention, but what makes Brooks different is the total conviction he exudes in his vision for a better Woodlawn, and in his belief that God is with him in making it happen. That kind of hope gets to people.

When asked what would happen if he didn’t raise the $450,000 needed to buy the Super Motel from the bank, he responded confidently, “I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about that.” Pastor Brooks believes wholeheartedly that this is a project that will succeed. And that confidence has touched an entire neighborhood. He went on, “it’s not an option to not make enough money.” And at the end of the day, it’s hard not to believe him.

Rachel Wiseman & Eric Fischer/flickr

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On October 25, the assembly hall of the Hyde Park Union Church was nearly empty. Of the two-dozen chairs arranged in rows before a projector screen, only six were filled. The attendees, all beyond middle age, waited expectantly.

This gathering was a preliminary informational meeting concerning a process that Chicago undergoes every decade—aldermanic ward redistricting. The sparse turnout can be seen as emblematic of the public’s obliviousness toward the issue, or, perhaps, their indifference.

Which ever it is, community activists on the South Side are trying to change it.

Mary Schaafsma from the League of Women Voters and Jocelyn Woodards of the South Side NAACP presided over the information session—a “Redistricting 101” meeting—in front of the half-dozen longtime Hyde Parkers.

A preliminary slide exhibited a polychromatic rendering of Chicago’s jigsaw puzzle of political fault lines. Although law requires wards to remain “compact and contiguous,” boundaries have been drawn to circumscribe individual blocks and avoid others. Take the 20th ward, a region that encompasses parts of Englewood, Washington Park, and Woodlawn with one winding tendril that snakes up north and then west to grab a piece of Back of the Yards.

“It looks like Medusa’s hair going in all directions,” Schaafsma observed, gesticulating broadly.

Woodards points out that, thanks to the clandestine nature of Chicago politics, “a lot of people have no idea this is even happening.”

Ward redistricting is a process that takes place in Chicago following every U.S. Census. State law requires that aldermanic ward borders be redrawn in order to ensure that each alderman represents an equally populated district. The deadline for the new map is fast approaching: aldermen must agree upon the new borders this Thursday, December 1.

In the last decade, Chicago experienced significant population loss that was exacerbated by the recession. Approximately 200,000 people left the city from 2000 to 2009, setting the population back to the same number that inhabited Chicago in 1920.

While African-Americans still make up the largest ethnic minority in Chicago, their numbers took the biggest toll, decreasing from 1,065,009 to 887,608 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Meanwhile, the city’s Hispanic population grew by 25,000 residents.

These shifting numbers have caused aldermen in City Hall to scramble. The conflicts over space are often complicated by race. Although African-Americans suffered the largest population loss, the Black Caucus—African-American members of city council—is determined to maintain their 19 aldermanic wards. Anticipating a game of political chess, the Black Caucus decided to make the first move by submitting their own map on September 19.

The Redistricting 101 Meeting condensed all of this information into a neat, 60 minute PowerPoint—something the city hadn’t been doing. Schaafsma described her organization’s demands in a nutshell: “All we are asking is that the city engage the public, for equal representation under the law, and for basic government processes.” A bit heated, she quickly chugged two Styrofoam cups of water. “Emanuel has taken a stand-back approach, taking his cues from Daley,” she continued icily. “For example, is Englewood inherently a bad neighborhood or is it because they have six alderman and no one is paying attention?”

But people outside City Council are paying attention.

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The day after Halloween the West Chesterfield Community Association held a special meeting at their headquarters in a stubby brick bungalow on 93rd and Michigan. About forty people gathered inside on cramped rows of metal folding chairs. The crowd was mixed: residents, local politicians, and representatives from community organizations. A small boy ate a Happy Meal, while leaning sleepily against his mother.

West Chesterfield Community Association President Michael LaFargue began the meeting by saying, “We’re all working together because we’re in this together.”

The West Chesterfield residents in attendance are proud of their traditionally strong voter turn-out and enjoy being grouped in the sixth ward with the comparatively stable Chatham community. In other words, the residents don’t want the neighborhood to be tainted with the problems of the neighboring wards. LaFargue gestures to the Black Caucus map proposal, with West Chesterfield resting in an expanded ninth ward. “That’s a very large ward, how can anyone handle that? …We’re going to fight this thing.”

LaFargue introduced Jocelyn Woodards to the crowd, who a week before had assisted in the Hyde Park meeting. Woodards took to the lectern dressed in a lime green suit coat. Behind Woodards, a Holy Bible and a three volume tome entitled Black America rested on a mantelpiece before a wall plastered in large posters with anti-redistricting slogans. Woodards began, “They [the city council] are claiming we lost 200,000 people. Who were they and where did they go?”

“Black people,” the crowd murmured unanimously.

“And what does that mean for us?” Woodards inquired.

“Less representation,” was the resounding reply.

“It’s time for us to get it together and ensure we have the best representation possible.” Woodards’s statement was met with applause and amens.

In an open discussion that followed, audience members voiced suspicion, confusion, and even outright anger at the proposal to move West Chesterfield from the sixth to the ninth ward. The room, heated with bodies and emotion, caused someone to yank the cord of a ceiling fan.

“We need to make sure we maintain the integrity of the community,” an audience member affirmed. “That is what’s wrong with Englewood. It’s like many cooks have spoiled the broth. We don’t want four or five or six aldermanic districts in the community.”

One woman said frankly, “It’s like a slap in the face because we’re subjected to people we didn’t vote for.” The crowd stirred in agreement.

Their suspicion is not unwarranted. While wards have given ethnic groups access to political power and city resources, Chicago has seen politicians resort to gerrymandering—drawing political borders for private political gain—to expand their clout in the city. Redistricting becomes a game that is less about representation and more about maintaining office by lassoing pockets of community areas that will guarantee an alderman’s reelection—historically, districts containing fewer residents with college degrees and which usually have low voter turnout rates. The 14th ward, for example, a predominately Latino community where fewer than one in ten people have graduated from college, has had the same alderman since 1969.

Following the meeting, guests chatted and posed for pictures holding 8-by-10-inch printer paper reading, “We Oppose West Chesterfield Redistricting.” Resident Shirley Adams rose from her folding chair. Putting on her winter coat, she explained she attended the meeting “just to be briefed on what is going on and how much progress is being made.” For Adams, the intentions of the community are clear—“we want to stay in the 6th ward.”

But West Chesterfield isn’t the only neighborhood on alert. A blue leaflet has been circulated around Englewood promoting another redistricting meeting. On the pamphlet reads the following challenge: “You say we are never informed of what is going on in our communities before it happens, well, Resident Matters is trying to change that! Now the rest is up to you!”

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“I was taught a sign of a good compromise is that everybody walks out of the room mad,” said Fredrenna Lyle at the meeting in the Englewood branch of the Chicago Police Department on November 2.

Lyle—a lawyer who lost her third reelection campaign for Alderman of the 6th ward this spring—defended the Black Caucus proposal. After dividing up their wards legally and with the aid of a professional cartographer from Lansing, Michigan, the Black Caucus let a computer program draw the remaining wards.

Although she explained the Black Caucus’s position logically—one based on sheer legality—a distinct “us versus them” tone permeated her argument, particularly against the Latino Caucus. “They can come up with anything they want. We even gave them an extra ward. This whole thing is a blank canvas in terms where they can go.”

Lyle addressed the lack of congruity in Englewood—a neighborhood fractured into six aldermanic wards: “Englewood is the biggest change [on our map]. It’s about consolidating. The map we’ve drawn reduced the current six aldermen by one. We couldn’t reduce it ten years ago. Your aldermen loved you so much they didn’t want to leave!” In response, the audience laughed wryly.

“Change is scary,” Lyle admitted. “It’s understandable, but we are trying to maximize African-American representation without stepping or trampling on any other groups’ wards.”

She emphasized that the Black Caucus map was not an incumbency plan and blamed the media for propagating such a message. “Not all the alderman [of the Black Caucus] even agreed on this map…We didn’t want individual interest to supersede the interest of the African-American community.” Everyone, she stressed, had to make sacrifices, even if it meant drawing up less-than-ideal ward boundaries to satisfy legal requirements. “You [the aldermen] can have x,y, and z in la-la-land, but in the real world this is what we were dealt.”

“So,” she concluded, “if you can draw a better map, bring it in.”

On November 10, The Latino Caucus attempted just that.

This version included four more majority-Hispanic wards. One new ward on the southwest side would sweep up isolated Latino areas in the 3rd, 15th, 16th, 18th and 20th wards, all of which currently have a black majority. Ricardo Muñoz, 22nd ward alderman, told the Chicago Sun-Times, “If we’re one-third of the city, why are we one-fifth of the City Council? It’s not that we deserve it. That’s the law.”

Chicago’s Asian community is voicing similar concerns. Although the Asian population has expanded 40 percent in the past decade and is the fastest growing minority in Chicago, Asian populations in Chinatown and Bridgeport have never seen an Asian alderman. According to the Asian American Institute, “this lack of government representation is unacceptable…The Asian American community will organize itself…in a call for the importance of promoting transparency and public participation in the redistricting process.”

After being badgered by the public, 33rd ward alderman Richard Mell issued a public notice announcing six public hearings on the City of Chicago redistricting process. This got the City Council’s stamp of approval on October 31. The first meeting was held on November 2, giving community members only one day to mobilize and only three weeks until the actual vote.

The process to approve a new map can be murky and prolonged. Each alderman goes individually into the city’s map room to demonstrate how they want their ward redrawn. The city mapmakers then produce a map. If ten or more members of city council disagree with the proposed map, they can propose another map and the process drags on until a referendum can be held in March, a potentially costly procedure. The most infamous example of prolonging the process was the 1992 referendum that cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

There is a reason that redistricting is so important this time around. Hyde Park resident and political activist Dorothy Scheff made this explicit after the Redistricting 101 meeting: “There is more hope now—for the first time all the aldermen have been elected and there is a new mayor. The aldermen have not been appointed like the Daley crop. [Redistricting] is a problem we have been aware of for generations.” She gestured toward her fellow Montgomery Place retirement home residents and said, “I think now we feel there is a chance for change.”

Claire Hungerford

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In the early morning, things are pretty quiet around St. Clotilde Church in Chatham. A few cars may be heard turning west off Calumet onto 84th Street, but most of the noise comes from the wind hitting the trees that line the area’s sidewalks, shading its one- and two-story brick houses and 80-year-old stone church. It’s an area that feels more like a suburb than a part of the city, and its residents—mostly families and seniors—generally seem to like it that way, quiet and uneventful. It came as a surprise, then, when on the morning of September 6 a school bus stopped in front of St. Clotilde, and for the first time, opened its doors and let out a handful of teenage students. As far as the community was concerned, the school housed by St. Clotilde had been closed for years.

As longtime Chatham resident and community activist Worlee Glover tells it, “Many of the residents had been seeing things move in throughout the summer, and when they were asking questions no one would answer. They approached the church, the church told them they didn’t know, nothing was going on, and then they went to call the Archdiocese and were really told it wasn’t none of their business.” After the school bus pulled up for the first day of class, more calls were made. Eventually it came out that the church’s second and third stories had become the new home of Richard Milburn High School and its 37 high school and ten junior high students.

In the official language of Chicago Public Schools, Richard Milburn is an “alternative safe school,” serving students who have received long-term suspensions or, pending adjudication, may receive a long-term suspension. According to CPS spokesperson Frank Shuftan, “In the absence of a safe-school option, these students would be out of school.” Along with Banner North in Lincoln Park and Vivian Summers in Roseland, Milburn is designed to help suspended students continue their education, receive support services, and ultimately graduate, be it from their safe school or local school.

Though safe schools are publically funded, each is operated by a contracted company. At Milburn, for example, administrators like school director Calista Winford are employees of Richard M. Milburn High Schools Inc., a private, Virginia-based company that has been contracted by CPS since 1998. The city has similar contracts in place at Banner North, where the school is operated by Banner Educational Group, and at Vivian Summers, operated by Human Resource Development Institute, Inc. According to Shuftan, the contractors “are better positioned to provide the flexible scheduling, wrap-around services, and transition supports needed for these students in highly personalized, very small school settings.”

In addition to running each school’s programming, the companies are also responsible for finding and maintaining school facilities. Milburn was previously located at Holy Angels Church in Bronzeville, but, according to Shuftan, “serious facility issues were discovered that made the building unfit for school occupancy and required a relocation.” The school’s lease at Holy Angels was between Milburn and the Archdiocese, not CPS, so the company negotiated directly with the Archdiocese to find a new location. The upper story classroom space of St. Clotilde had been available since the church’s Catholic school closed several years ago due to low enrollment, and so a new lease was drawn up and the school began to move in.

This explanation of the move is disputed by Worlee Glover. Relying on information from Chatham residents who attend Holy Angels, Glover claims that the church “decided not to do the repairs because of a lot of pressure from the community. They did not want the school down there.” An employee of Holy Angels claims that the school did not move because of health and safety issues, and that in fact there were no health and safety issues—moving the school, she says, was the decision of the pastor, Father John Atoyebi. Contradicting CPS’s account, Ryan Blackburn, head of communications for the Archdiocese’s Catholic schools program, says that because the lease was for a school outside the Catholic school district, it was handled by the relevant parishes—in this case, Holy Angels and St. Clotilde—instead of the Archdiocese. And, it turns out, Father Atoyebi is the pastor of both Holy Angels and St. Clotilde. Neither the Archdiocese nor Father Atoyebi have responded to requests for additional information.

Some Chatham residents have speculated that the gentrification of Bronzeville spurred the move. According to this line of thinking, the neighborhood’s population became increasingly uncomfortable with the presence of Milburn’s students. However, alternative schools and ritzy neighborhoods don’t have to clash. Banner North’s location at St. Bonaventure Church in Lincoln Park is surrounded by upscale housing along Paulina Street and Marshfield Avenue.

Regardless of the motivation for moving Milburn High School, the move caught everyone in the community by surprise. Roosevelt Vonil, president of the Greater Chatham Alliance, expressed dismay at the “secretive nature” of the deal, according to an article published in Copy Line Magazine last month. Even 6th Ward Alderman Roderick T. Sawyer did not foresee Milburn’s arrival in Chatham. In a September 28 letter to the Chicago Defender, Alderman Sawyer wrote that the lack of communication regarding the school’s move to Chatham was “disrespectful to the community” and showed “a complete lack of regard for the legitimate concerns of a neighborhood.” According to Worlee Glover, Chatham had been approached by an alternative school before regarding the St. Clotilde location, but the community turned them down, telling the school it wouldn’t have it. The issue for Glover, Alderman Sawyer, and many others in the community is safety. Alderman Sawyer wrote, “There are legitimate concerns about having teenagers take public transportation to a school that is multiple blocks from most sources of public transportation.” Per CPS policy, middle school students are bused, while high school students must arrive to school on their own.

However, residents seem less concerned with teenagers riding public transit than with troubled students walking through the neighborhood. Reasons students are transferred to an alternative safe school like Milburn vary, but may include aggravated assault, burglary, or battery. “We don’t know where these young people are coming from, we don’t know where these young people have been,” says Glover. His fear was reinforced by a recent triple-homicide in Chatham, “where we had a teenager who wanted to settle a score, didn’t care about life, didn’t care who was around, picked up a gun and went and shot three people.”

The teenager was not connected to Milburn, but the fear of student violence has led to a community-wide backlash against the school’s presence. In October, Jennifer Vidis, deputy director of alternative schools for CPS, was met with displeasure and frustration at open meetings held by the Chatham Avalon Park Community Council and the Greater Chatham Alliance. At the meetings, Vidis stated she would speak with the CPS legal team and attempt to come up with some solutions to community concerns. As of press time, Vidis has not responded to requests for more information about these possible solutions. Shuftan claims that principal Winford has met with members of the community and made herself available to address any concerns, and the school is also in the process of organizing a “Safe Passages Program” to assuage community concerns about students walking through the neighborhood.

While tensions remain, it’s hard to tell that anything’s changed about St. Clotilde from the outside. The neighborhood looks the same—the streets around the church are still quiet, the lawns still trimmed and green. The only change occurs early, around 8am, when the first school bus pulls in and a group of teenagers starts walking down 84th Street. “The community understands these young people have to be educated,” said Glover. But “at the end of the school year, my neighborhood wants the school to move.”

Jacqueline Friduss/Rachel Wiseman

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“It is clear how you feel about the new front desk staff,” repeated Eli Ungar last Tuesday in the Kenwood Academy auditorium. Ungar, partner and principal of Antheus Capital LLC, directed his comment to a section of riled up Regent’s Park residents. On October 27, the building, located at 50th Street and Lake Shore Drive, was sold by Crescent Heights to Antheus, a New Jersey-based developer locally represented by its affiliate, MAC Property Management. The $160 million deal had been in the works since late August, according to Crain’s Chicago Business, but what that sale meant for the building’s employees remained unclear until 6pm on Thursday, October 27. At that time, Peter Richter, who had been the building manager for the past 23 years, carried his things out the front door.

“He exited the premises, and had a tear in his eye as he walked out,” recalls Brian Phillips, a doorman who has worked at Regents Park for five years. In spite of this bad omen, Phillips and Wes Allen, the other doorman on duty, remained at their posts until something strange occurred: a van of unfamiliar uniformed staff arrived at the building.

“There were quick introductions, some very friendly-seeming guys, and the next moment we were being bombarded with questions,” says Allen, who has worked at Regents Park for 19 years. “’How much does a cab cost to downtown? What does this button do?’” Phillips shakes his head, continuing, “I’ve always tried to show that I’m excellent at what I do here. But then a light bulb went off—I realized they were trying to get a crash course.”

At 7:50pm, the two doormen got a phone call from Richter. “He said that if we hadn’t gotten a job offer from MAC, we should come back the next morning at 8am to talk to Crescent Heights.” When they started to leave, one of the new arrivals tried to stop them, imploring, “Don’t go!” Then, Phillips recalls with disgust, he asked them if they liked the nearby gelato and offered some coupons in exchange for a lesson on how to operate the front desk.

The Crescent Heights employees returned the next morning to find their posts at the front desk filled by strangers, and a stack of papers notifying them that MAC would not take on their current contracts. Through September and October, Crescent Heights had given their employees only vague answers about what would happen to their jobs after ownership of the building was transferred. According to employee accounts of the events leading up to October 27, representatives from Crescent Heights told workers that MAC had “accepted” their contracts and that they would “probably” be extended—though, they maintained, “they didn’t know” for sure.

However, after the keys were turned over to MAC, about 50 employees were let go—including maintenance workers, security, garage attendants, and doormen. Coming in to work on the 28th, employees were met with a stack of dismissal letters. For some, those dismissal letters were the only form of notification they received. “I’m the bottom man here in terms of seniority,” Brian Phillips says, having worked for only five years at Regents. “But some of these guys put in 23 years and it was all taken from them in twelve hours.”

When Crescent Heights purchased the building from Clinton Management five years ago, the company decided to keep all the original staff. As a result, it was not anticipated that—as one resident calls it—a “hostile takeover” would occur. Although during this prior ownership transfer union members engaged Crescent Heights in collective bargaining, no such negotiations occurred between former employees and the new owners. MAC insists that it has fulfilled all contractual obligations with Crescent Heights—there was no clause in the buy-sell agreement that required the old employees to stay on at the building. Sister Mary Rosen, a longtime resident, expressed the views of many tenants when she told Ungar, “What’s legal is not always moral, and I don’t want to be complicit in a grave social injustice.”

On October 30, Regents Park residents—some of whom have lived there for three decades—came together in support of the terminated employees, flooding the lounge on the top floor. Over 90 percent of the buildings’ occupants signed a petition expressing their “disapproval of the unjust dismissals of [the] concierge, garage and maintenance staffs” who “have done an excellent job” and are viewed as “friends, confidants, and extended family members.” The petition calls for the reinstatement of fired staff, if MAC hopes to “maintain harmonious relationships with [its] residents.”

Antheus responded by flying Ungar out from New Jersey for the meeting at Kenwood Academy, where all the seats in the residents’ section were filled. The audience had to be reminded by Wallace Good, president of the Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce and moderator of the meeting, that Hyde Park has “a tradition of sitting discourse,” and that all questions should be held until Ungar had said his piece.

Ungar began with a brief history of Antheus’s rapid rise since 2002, emphasizing his organization’s humble origins—from managing one building to owning almost a third of the real estate units in Hyde Park—and its contributions to the neighborhood. “We actively support numerous community organizations, including this school,” Ungar began. “We’ve paid for many of the seats you are sitting in, and given scholarships to many students.” He made promises regarding various improvements to the building, insisting on his commitment to “preserving Regents Park as superlative.”  With regard to the staff overhaul, he maintained that his company “followed the letter of the law,” but that “this was a complicated decision and not one [the company] entered into lightly.” He gave examples of how Antheus has “reached out to many former employees” and tried to place them in positions at other MAC properties.

Phillips, the former doorman, shot up from his seat in the second row and had to wait for cheers to subside before addressing Ungar. “My call to the Algonquin was not returned,” he said. “I suspect it’s because of my pro-Union affiliation.” The audience erupted into boos, compelling Ungar to reassure Phillips that his calls would be returned. Ungar reemphasized that Antheus has been making an effort to help out the Crescent Heights employees: some had been offered jobs, while those living in Regents received three months of free rent. One former employee, German García, received the rent voucher and a new job offer, but he declined. The new position came with a lower wage.

Ungar’s repeated promise that “the new staff will do superbly” if the residents “give them a chance” was met with both outrage and mockery. Resident after resident emphasized the closeness of the Regents Park community, the trust that was built over the years, and the existence of an extended family in the building. “You’re not going to succeed until you return that goodwill,” said Marly Rosenbush, a longtime resident.

Other tenants tried to communicate the new staff’s incompetence, decrying the “foolishness” of the new staff who “run around like chickens with their heads cut off,” unable to operate the handicapped doors and failing to fix broken sinks. Ungar responded: “We have worked hard over the last week and a half to understand the operation of the front desk, and I think we’re getting better.” More boos filled the auditorium.

Whether or not the transition was illegal, it may prove to have been a bad business move. “We’re going to obliterate your ratings for Regents Park,” said two suit-sporting law and business school students, referring to the building’s Google reviews. “We won’t stop until we make sure this building is empty.”

Phillips and other members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local One have been picketing every day outside the building since November 7. On Saturday morning, they were eating doughnuts and coffee—gifts from the residents. “You just missed it,” Phillips says, pointing to the backed up driveway. “Two elderly people crashed into the wall—you can see the dent there.” There was a delayed response time from emergency services, he says, adding, “The new staff gave the 5020-5050 S. Lake Shore Drive address, but the one normally given to emergency services is 5025 S. East End. Fire trucks and ambulances were circling around the building for a long time.” No one was hurt, but “imagine if it had been something more serious,” he tuts.

In response to a question over whether he thought Ungar would keep his word about the Algonquin job offer, Phillips shakes his head. Gesturing over to the building’s offices across the street, he claims, “They probably see me out here every day, and they don’t like my jacket.” Doug Ball, a SEIU union representative, adds that though the Algonquin has over 100 employees, only four of them belong to a union. “And that’s MAC’s only unionized location.”

Both SEIU Local 1, which represents the concierge, doormen, and maintenance, and Teamsters Local 727, which represents the garage attendants, plan to file charges against MAC for discriminating against unions in its hiring practices. Though the employees who were let go are both union and non-union, all of the new hires are “temporary employees hired through temporary firms,” according to Ball. “There’s not one union member in there.”

At Kenwood Academy last Tuesday, Ungar committed to responding to the residents’ demands within a week. Wednesday morning, picketers saw him speed off in a limo to the airport. As of press time, he still has not delivered a response about whether the old employees will be rehired.

Meanwhile, residents are fulfilling their promises: the online ratings for Regents Park have dropped, and community boards are buzzing with complaints, anecdotes, and open letters to Ungar. “We don’t need six large security guards to protect us from our FRIENDS,” one letter reads, referring to the security guards Antheus has hired to make sure the picketers don’t get rowdy. “Your security force does nothing other than intimidate residents from talking to, embracing, and supporting men that we consider family.” But from looking at the picket line, where  residents often stop for a hug or to talk, it’s clear that this family is doing its best not to be torn apart.

Disclosure: The author of this article is a resident of an apartment owned and managed by MAC.

Claire Hungerford & Verbonkos/flickr

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The battle is over. A war has been won. So announced Mari Gallagher, the social scientist whose landmark 2006 report on food access in Chicago coined the term “food desert.”

Gallagher defines a food desert simply as “a large geographic area with no or distant grocery stores.” But in recent years, the word has taken on a particular meaning, wrapped in the image of a poor, urban area where residents must travel for miles just to find a few vegetables. Residents of a food desert may have access to plenty of junk food, but they have almost no nearby access to food that is high-quality, healthy, and—above all—affordable. As a result, they are far more at risk for diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cancer.

While food deserts remain a persistent problem in Chicago, the reality is not as grim as it seems. Gallagher’s latest report, released last month, contained a heartening and perhaps unexpected message: “As we mark the fifth year of our original report’s release, we realized it was time to retire the Food Desert awareness campaign. We feel the awareness war has been won, as evidenced by this week’s arrival of our nation’s First Lady.”

Gallagher and her research team are referring to Michelle Obama’s visit to Chicago’s “food summit” on October 25. Mayor Rahm Emanuel gathered up the First Lady, local urban farmers, grocery store CEOs and eight mayors from across the country to convene and discuss the problem of urban food deserts. The summit coincided with news that Chicago’s food desert has shrunk by 40 percent in the last five years. With so much attention from major politicians, it’s easy to believe that the first step in the fight against food deserts—raising awareness—has been won. But now that the food desert issue has come to the fore and the preliminary actions seem to be working, where does Chicago go from here?

The First Lady visited two very different locations on October 25: a newly expanded Walgreens on 75th Street and an urban farm in Bridgeport. At the Walgreens, she stood at a podium in front of the drug store’s new produce section and spoke to an audience of local, national, and corporate leaders on the issue of food access in poverty-stricken areas. Obama, whom the Chicago Sun-Times calls “the country’s most recognizable symbol of healthy living,” went on to visit the Iron Street Urban Farm for a tour of the facilities, but not before Rahm Emanuel, the man who invited her to the food summit, had some important announcements to make.

He declared that 17 new grocery stores would open in Chicago, and 19 Walgreens would expand to include a produce section. Most of the stores will be on the city’s South and West Sides, in areas like North Lawndale, West Pullman, Englewood, Bronzeville and Roseland. Walgreens claims that it will provide around 600 new jobs for the city in the next two years.

Why does the definition of a food desert center around the grocery store, and why was the opening of new grocery stores announced with such flourish? Large chain grocers can sell fresh produce at cheaper prices and higher quantities than local corner stores. High poverty rates are a major feature of food deserts—the USDA’s definition of food desert even includes a specification that at least 20 percent of the population must be under the poverty line. And while there may be many local corner stores in a food desert, these small shops are better equipped to sell highly-processed food with a long shelf life than produce, milk or meat, which all need to be sold and restocked quickly before they spoil.

What makes matters worse is that many shops that accept food stamp benefits are exactly these kinds of corner stores. There are 2,200 stores that accept food stamps in Chicago, but according to a 2010 WBEZ investigation, 30 percent of them are not grocers, but rather liquor stores, gas stations, a­­nd dollar stores. That means that those who can least afford the high costs of diseases connected to poor diet are also those who can only afford to shop at stores that stock unhealthier food.

The well-publicized meeting on October 25 was not the mayor’s first mention of the food desert problem, although it might be his most high-profile food access event to date. In June, one month after his inauguration, Emanuel convened six CEOs from companies like Walmart, Walgreens, and Save-a-Lot for his first food summit, a candid talk about why there weren’t more grocery stores in underserved communities, and how there could be.

Emanuel showed the CEOs a map of the city’s food deserts, studded with stars that represented “sites for food retail opportunity.” Concerns over the prospect of opening up new grocery stores included, “lack of transportation, security, real estate development and bureaucratic red tape,” according to a press release from the mayor’s office. Emanuel offered to fast-track permits, zoning, and licensing procedures for developments in designated food deserts. He said that if a company wanted to open multiple stores at the same time, they would only have to submit one general zoning request rather than one per store.

Emanuel’s strategy is clear: he can’t force corporations to open new grocery stores in food deserts, but he can give them incentives so that it’s worth their investment.

He sees his solution as a compromise that will allow both the mayor and the corporations to align their bottom lines, so that the stores will turn a profit and the city will see an increase in healthy food options.

“Although it’s morally motivating for me, they’re not in the moral business,” he said on a WBEZ radio program. “As one CEO said to me and I won’t say who, ‘Look, if you want to grandstand I’ll write you a check and I’ll be done with it.’ I said that’s not what I want. I want you to open open stores that serve people, create jobs and make money. I want you to make money.”

However, more will open up in the city than just Save-a-Lots and expanded Walgreens: the city has also taken steps to support urban agriculture. Kraft and Safeway agreed to commit $150,000 to pilot up to five new farmers markets in Chicago’s west side over the next two years, and Growing Power, the organization that runs the Iron Street Urban Farm, signed a memorandum of understanding with Walgreens and Aldi that will hopefully lead to locally-grown produce being sold in those stores.

Most significantly, in September, a new city ordinance passed that officially legitimizes urban farms in the zoning code. It eliminated many of the obstacles that large, commercial urban farms faced in order to grow their business. The ordinance increased the size limit on community gardens to 25,000 square feet, relaxed fencing and parking regulations, granted some produce sales in residential areas, and allowed the installation of hydroponic and aquaponic systems, as well as honey bees.

By promoting an increase in both grocery store chains and farmers markets in food desert areas, Emanuel has pushed together two very unlikely companions: major grocery store and pharmacy chains and urban farms. One operates on a huge scale and is profit-driven, while the other is hyper-local and propeled in large part by visions of social change. The two sides may be opposite in terms of aims and motivation, but for once, CEOs and CSAs are on the same team.

Just a month after the new city ordinance passed, on October 14, the first urban farm officially zoned as such opened in Englewood. Honore Street Farm, on the eponymous street between 58th and 59th streets, is still just a bare concrete lot, but as the first farm to open after the new ordinance, it represents a new beginning for urban farming.

The farm is part of Growing Home, an organization that provides transitional employment and job training to people whose trouble pasts make it difficult for them to find a job. Growing Home runs three certified organic farms in addition to the Honore Street site: Les Brown Memorial Farm in Marseilles, Illinois; Su Casa Market Garden in Back of the Yards; and the Wood Street Urban Farm, close to the Honore Street Farm in Englewood.

According to Harry Rhodes, executive director of Growing Home, setting up urban farms was not always easy. Wood Street Farm, for example, had to be zoned as a technical institute. “We had a lot of obligations that made getting the farm up and running difficult, including parking places, landscaping, and fencing,” he says over the phone. “This ordinance makes it easier and lessens the burden.”

Now urban farms can worry less if a new administration comes in that doesn’t care about urban agriculture, says Seneca Kern, the Community Outreach Organizer for Growing Home. “It’s not at their whim,” he says, “It’s in the books.”

I meet Kern in his job-training classroom at the Wood Street Farm. Founded in 2005, Wood Street is in the middle of a highly residential neighborhood. Houses line up block after block, and out of nowhere a patch of green appears, spanning two-thirds of an acre, surrounded by a chain-link fence. Inside, the hoophouses are filled with vibrant green lettuce and jewel-bright rainbow chard.

The visit to the Wood Street farm underscores what makes grocery stores and urban farms different in their approach and contributions to food access. Urban agriculture is very much rooted in its neighborhood, while many of these corporations have are headquartered outside of Chicago. Grocery stores and urban farms both provide jobs, but the farms organize educational events and community activism. The farm runs a market and holds movie nights, potlucks, cooking demos, tours to get people engaged.

“We see a lot of kids who come just to spend time here,” Kern says. “This is a real, direct solution.”

Kern himself was born in Englewood, and he remembers hating the wilted, sad little vegetables at the corner stores. So his grandmother, who grew up in Mississippi, would drive her grandkids all the way to Indiana to pick fruit straight off the vine.

“A lot of Southern folks did that,” Kern recalls. “I vividly remember it. My favorite was the grapes.”

But Kern’s take on Englewood’s food desert is unique. First of all, he says don’t call it a food desert. As Kern points out, it’s more of a “food swamp.”

“There’s food here,” he shrugs, “it’s just shitty.”

A quick tour of the area surrounding the Wood Street Farm perfectly illustrates his point. Just a short walk away from Wood Street is a corner store, with a big yellow sign in front that says it accepts LINK, the Illinois state food stamp card. A row of cereal boxes, as brightly colored and eye-catching as the rainbow chard on Wood Street, greets shoppers as soon as they come in. The aisles are filled with canned food, candy, soda, and the like. As for the produce offerings are concerned, the pickings are slim: one box of onions and a few potatoes, hidden in the corner.

Grocery stores isn’t a cure-all, Kern notes. As a kid, Kern didn’t mind the long drive to Indiana; for him, quality matters above convenience, and so he’s skeptical about how much Walmart and Walgreens can help.

“The grocery store can be just a bigger corner store,” he says. Even if the food desert completely disappeared according to the official statistics, there there would be, he thinks, “the same amount of crap food, but maybe it would be easier to get it. Sure, they could have a big parade and say food deserts are gone, but it wouldn’t be true.”

Corporate grocery stores are vital to increase broad access to fresh food in poor areas, many experts say, but they can’t stand alone. “They are part of the solution but not the only solution,” Rhodes acknowledges. A more holistic approach would include backyard gardens, community gardens, farm stands, and more. He also suggested that the mayor’s office should create a position for a food system and enterprise coordinator. Instead of running around different departments within the City Hall to try and find answers to their questions about permits and regulations, they could go to just one point person.

“We’re talking about changing local economies and investing in local economies,” he says. “Putting in a grocery store won’t solve all your problems.” Nevertheless, he admits, “It would just be ignoring reality to say that they’re not going to exist.”

Laure Dutirou, a volunteer at the 61st Street Farmer’s Market in Woodlawn, commented on the relationship between grocery stores and farmer’s markets. “They are complementary, they don’t exclude each other,” she said. “Let’s face it, not everyone can afford [farmers markets], especially here…we probably should have an Aldi right at the corner.”

As Emanuel said on Windy City Live, he’s not the first politician in the country to look at the food desert problem. What makes Chicago special is not that they’re the leader in any one field, but they’re exploring options in every field.

“What will be unique for Chicago,” he said, “is that…we’re bringing farmer’s markets, urban agriculture, and grocery stores all together, which is what no one has done before.”

Claire Hungerford and Kelsey Gee

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eta Creative Arts Foundation sits on a quiet strip of South Chicago Avenue, in the heart of the South Side. Though dilapidated residences and empty lots surround the simple beige building, its location seems ideal for a major arts district, with easy access to the Metra Electric Line and the Chicago Skyway. In the next few years, the physical space of eta’s stage will become instrumental to carrying out their founding mission—the production of theater by and for the city’s African American population.

While the group’s mission has not waivered since it was founded in 1971, eta’s leadership is currently going through a major transition. The foundation’s long-time president and co-founder, Abena Joan Brown, stepped down this past March, on the 40th anniversary of the opening of the theater. Brown, who was known for her nightly curtain call appearances and charismatic appeals for donations, has been a major force in African American theater and has made important contributions to the development of arts on the South Side. In 1991, she was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame of the City of Chicago, and under her leadership, the theater has won more than 150 awards.

She passed the reins to Philip Thomas, a charming graduate of Morehouse College and the University of Chicago who has extensive experience in fiscal management. Thomas previously served as the group’s development director, before working for the charitable foundation Chicago Community Trust. According to Nancy McKeever, eta’s board president, “This is the first time new leadership has occurred.” With Thomas’ appointment, other firsts are on the way.

With Thomas guiding the way, eta is branching out in new directions through outreach programs and new partnerships, and is adopting a more accessible aesthetic. This new approach, aimed at attracting a more varied audience, was exemplified by the foundation’s recent production of “Flow.” The play, which closed a week ago after a successful run, connects traditional folktales with hip-hop music. During the production, an on-stage DJ orchestrates the retelling of the stories, attempting to put a modern spin on the classic tales. This is an attempt to cater to the tastes of younger theatergoers, through multimedia, while continuing to appeal to eta’s older stand-by patrons. eta is aiming to broaden their current audience base now so that they will continue to grow in the future. But to accommodate this growth, eta will need to expand.

eta was incorporated as a non-profit in April of 1971. Over the subsequent four decades, the foundation has produced over 180 mainstage productions by African American playwrights. In order to achieve the group’s mission of promoting “the African American aesthetic in the city of Chicago,” the theater has served as a launching pad for original pieces—98 percent of the theater’s productions have been world premieres.

While it has opened the door for local black playwrights, the non-profit’s 40-year history hasn’t been without trials. eta spent many years “vagabonding,” moving their performances from one temporary location to another before settling down in their current space at 7448 S. Chicago. Currently, in addition to the theater hall, the building has a library, community room, and small art gallery dedicated to selling and displaying local art. Their 200-seat theater is intimate and versatile, allowing for a range of performances and kinds of engagement with the audience. But with an ever-growing roster of programs and a house filled with spectators and voices—regulars frequently chime in during well-loved performances—eta has begun to burst at the seams.

When the foundation first moved into its current space, all productions were held in the snug gallery space. But even since the mainstage theater was completed, the foundation’s various programs have had to fight for rehearsal and performance space. While new shows are practicing in the theater, other groups must rehearse alongside them.  “Every corner is used,” McKeever laughs.

According to McKeever, the foundation’s master plan committee “planned twenty years ahead” for this upcoming expansion. The goal was to maintain eta’s status as a “major cultural resource institution,” and coined the project “Grand Crossing/South Shore: Renaissance 2001” back when it was in preliminary stages.

Recently, physical plans have begun to materialize, and they are ambitious: eta’s facilities are slated to triple in size at a cost of $26 million. McKeever says that eta has acquired most of the money needed for the expansion through fundraising and donations, and that eta now owns the parcels of land they want to build upon. This land, which has been cleared for construction, is across the street from eta’s current building between 75th and 76th. The expansion project will create a fully rendered, all-purpose arts space, complete with a large community room for events, new gallery space, offices, a rehearsal studio, and a much larger auditorium with a thrust stage. The design space will be much more efficient as well, with an on-site construction and costume workshop.

The wheels are turning for the project. “The architectural plans and project management are done,” says McKeever. eta is currently in the middle of remodeling their current space, which must be done before expanding across the street.

However, there is no projected date for the completion of the expansion, and the economic downturn has hit eta in the gut, stalling the final stages of their money drive. Thomas is aware of the tough times facing the theater and arts on the South Side in general. “The community has been hit hard,” he says, “but eta has held its ground and will go up from here. We have to be careful and strategic in planning.” He jokingly described eta’s predicament with what he calls “a UChicago term”—“less income-elastic.” In plain English, eta must be tight-fisted with its cash.

Rather than proceed with the $26 million construction, Thomas’s immediate plan is to continue expanding eta’s programming. The foundation is, first and foremost, a training center—every year, more than 350 students are enrolled in the theater’s professional training program. eta aims to expand this training to off-site locations, thus easing the burden on the foundation’s strained facilities and

elaborating on existing ways to pull in new talent.

One such expansion will rest on a partnership with a University of Chicago Medical Center doctor named Doriane Miller. Miller is a clinical psychologist interested in urban youth violence, particularly on the South Side. She has arranged for the UCMC’s Center for Community Health and Vitality to partner with eta to produce the play “It Shoulda Been Me,” which Miller wrote to bring light to community violence and its effect on teens. According to Miller, “The play is about beginning the journey of healing and resilience and how teachers and family members are a part of that journey.” eta plans to bring this play to CPS students through its Showfolk Daytime Performance Series. After the show, the students will be offered study guides to help them relate the themes of the play to their lives. The hope is that by working with the play, students will be given an additional therapeutic outlet for handling violence in schools and the community.

As another part of their expansion, eta will lay the groundwork for entirely new theater programs. A grant from the Chicago Community Trust will allow the foundation to transfer current performances to Westinghouse College Prep in order to build a new program at the school. Westinghouse has recently built a state-of-the-art theater but has no actual program to speak of. By taking on projects like these, eta’s leadership hopes to generate as much excitement within the community as there is within the foundation itself. The move to a larger space is the natural next step in the process.

eta’s ultimate goal, however, is far more ambitious. Thomas dreams of a cultural district springing up around eta’s current location, complete with new restaurants and businesses geared toward the arts and entertainment. He firmly believes that eta’s stretch of South Chicago Avenue can become a South Side arts corridor, mirroring the Blues District in Bronzeville that was recently brought to life by the mayor’s office. The scope of the envisioned arts corridor makes eta’s physical expansion campaign seem relatively humble, but Thomas and McKeever both insist that if­­ eta is going to remain a world-class cultural institution, then the creation of an arts corridor is a necessity.

“eta is a microcosm of the African-American socioeconomic status,” Thomas says. In his view, an increase in eta’s prosperity will lead to an increase in the general welfare of the local community.

Whether in a massive auditorium or its own small gallery space, eta provides an essential platform for the development of new African American artists in Chicago. As a venue for “home-grown artists,” says Thomas, the foundation “gives voice to a lot of talent that would otherwise go unnoticed.”

Equally important, eta has given many South Side students and residents their first theater experience. “There is a magic that you can feel at eta,” McKeever willfully states. “eta instills a hope in the young people, and at all walks of life.”

Maggie Sivit

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Many South Side residents are used to long waits for buses. But for members of five Southwest Side neighborhoods, the wait is going on its 14th year.  In April 2008, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, as part of their 30-year plan for the city, held a series of meetings in Little Village, where residents vocalized their need for better transit. Soon afterwards, the community decided it was time to restore east-west bus service along a main commercial corridor in their neighborhood that was cut by the Chicago Transit Authority in 1997. Organizers from Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) met with community members who both remembered a historic 31st Street bus and expressed interest in bringing back the service. They worked with the CTA to locate a source of funding. That summer, the CTA received a federal grant earmarked for the 31st Street bus totaling $1,067,659.

But today, there is no bus along 31st Street. In the neighborhoods the street cuts through—Bronzeville, Armour Square, Bridgeport, McKinley Park, and Little Village—east-west bus service is lacking. Between Cermak Road and 47th Street, Chicago’s grid system of bus service breaks down, leaving large areas of white space on the CTA system map and roughly 200,000 people without a direct route. The #35, #39, and #60 buses provide service along 35th, 39th, and parts of 26th Streets, but the #35 and #39 terminate near Kedzie Avenue, and the #60 diverts north to the loop at Western Avenue. No bus provides a straight route from the lake to Chicago’s western boundary. “You have to hopscotch—go past where you need to go to get where you’re going,” says Bridgeport resident and community activist Maureen Sullivan.

The grant the CTA received in 2008 as part of the Job Access Reverse Commute (JARC) program of the U.S. Department of Transportation was a victory, but it came with a catch. The program requires that 50 percent of the transportation project’s operational budget be provided by state and local funds.

This has proven to be a major roadblock for the 31st Street bus campaign. The implementation and operations costs for the proposed route are estimated by the CTA to be approximately $2 million, not including the portion of the expense to be covered by fares. The CTA must match the $1 million grant in order for the bus to become a reality, at least for the trial period. In an e-mailed statement, the agency stated, “Currently, there are no local match funds identified to implement the project.”  Residents have waited for this to change for the past three years.

The CTA has drafted a route to connect to the Red and Orange ‘L’ Lines as well as the new Rock Island district Metra stop at 35th Street, though the proposal has not been finalized. It would provide transportation for working, transit-dependent residents of the West and near South Side to major workplaces such as Domino Sugar, Prima Plastics, and Dearborn Produce. Teens and families could access parks and the 31st Street beach. The route would end at Cicero Avenue, traveling north a few blocks through a commercial center to Target. LVEJO has also proposed that the route extend north on its eastern end, running express on Lakeshore Drive to McCormick Place and the Museum Campus. Mike Pitula, a community organizer and LVEJO’s director of public transit, claims that currently, “this area has no direct bus access from the West or South Side.”

Although the grant specifies that the 31st Street route provide access to jobs, Pitula argues that this service is important for two more reasons: to contribute to environmental efforts and to create safe routes to local schools.

The proposed bus route would service De La Salle Institute and Illinois Institute of Technology in Bronzeville, as well as Holden Elementary School in Bridgeport. And, more urgently, the 31st Street bus would provide safe transportation to a school in dire need of it. According to a survey conducted by LVEJO, Little Village-Lawndale High School is the only high school in Chicago that does not have CTA service within 2.5 blocks. According to Pitula, approximately one-quarter of the students who attend LVLHS must cross a gang boundary while walking to school. Violence has spiked along 31st Street since 2009. One of two closest CTA stops to the high school is on Cicero Avenue, but Pitula says there have been reports of young women being sexually harassed after school on a nearby bridge. “While it wouldn’t be a magic bullet, having a bus route would be one way to prevent these interactions from happening,” he says.

Schoolchildren aren’t the only population the bus would impact. Older residents have struggled with the lack of bus service for a long time. Senior citizens with limited mobility, who can’t get to checkups at Mercy Hospital or to the senior club at Piotrowski Park, have been particularly vocal in the 31st Street bus debate. Tom Gaulke, a pastor at the First Trinity Church in Bridgeport has heard his parishioners complain and summarized their dissatisfaction: “all these little old ladies at the senior home can never make it out anywhere.”

In May 2011, after three years, LVEJO decided to take action once again. “This spring, we realized there was a deadline coming up,” said Pitula, “you don’t just get a grant and sit on it forever.” The CTA claimed in an August community meeting and in an e-mail statement this past week that the $1 million will not expire. But according to the Federal Transit Authority’s website, JARC funding is available only for a total of three years after apportionment.

According to Pitula, the CTA has applied for a one-year extension of the grant. “It’s a fairly routine procedure,” he says, but the current phase in LVEJO’s campaign is to put pressure on the Federal Transit Administration to approve the extension. They expect to hear back before the end of the year.

This summer, working under pressure of an imminent deadline, the campaign expanded to encompass other communities along the route. In fact, some groups were already vocalizing their concerns about the bus route’s progress independently from LVEJO. According to Pitula, the campaign began in two places simultaneously three years ago: Little Village and Facebook. The Facebook page was created by lifelong resident of Bridgeport and video store owner Joe Trutin as part of his campaign for state representative in 2009. He and the Little Village activists have since joined forces, with Trutin rallying residents of Bridgeport and McKinley Park. He’s also taken on the task of gathering data to bolster their case—over the last few months, Trutin has been measuring the width of streets in attempt to refute one resident’s claim that 31st Street is not wide enough for bus service. He and Pitula have fought all opposition, however small, but Trutin says only two members of these communities have publicly voiced it.

Though much of the organizing has been centered in Little Village and Bridgeport, the issue crosses many neighborhood boundaries and has engaged many people. In late August, the CTA held a meeting with community members at the McKinley Park library. In addition to residents of Little Village, Bridgeport and Chinatown, senior citizens from Armour Square and McKinley Park came to emphasize their dependency on transit. “We showed them that we were a diverse group of people who had a common goal,” says Connie Ma, who works at the Chinese American Service League in Chinatown. Many community organizations have signed on to the campaign, from church groups and cultural clubs to the more extreme Citizens Against Terrible Transit. Pitula expressed that his goal this summer was to build “a cross-town coalition composed of residents along this route,” and it appears he has been successful.

At one point in this process, some residents—bus drivers and mechanics who could contribute their skills to the community—tossed around the idea of providing their own bus service. Pitula summarized this project as a “worker self-managed bus cooperative” that would be organized by the Chicago chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World. “It would be a demonstration for the CTA, but also an alternative model of transit to provide work and service for people in the community,” he said. The idea, added Ma, would be “to utilize the people the CTA has laid off.” While progress on this alternative has stagnated over the past few months, the idea of an independent bus service is not foreign to Little Village. Pitula remembers a free shuttle service along 26th Street that was disconnected a few years ago—a single school bus that residents could flag at street corners, funded by advertisements on its exterior.

The push for a 31st Street bus is a fight to provide South Side residents with easier mobility, a need that other Chicagoans recognize. Sullivan, who lives and works in Bridgeport, points out that the major expressways are easily accessible from the near South Side, but there are many people in these neighborhoods who do not own cars and their movement is, as a consequence, limited to their own neighborhoods. To some extent, a 31st Street bus would unite the neighborhoods it serves and reduce this isolation. “Once people travel, they start exploring,” Trutin explains.

The people behind the 31st Street bus campaign realize that theirs is an uphill battle—to add a route at a time when CTA trends have tended towards increased fares and cutting service—but pressure on the CTA is building. The project has received letters of support from one state senator, two state representatives, and three aldermen, according to its Facebook page. The $1 million needed to implement this route is less than one tenth of one percent of the  CTA’s annual budget, but Pitula nonetheless has taken them at their word that the agency does not have the identified funds.

Residents of these communities will not stop fighting for the 31st Street bus—some have already been fighting for 14 years. In the meantime, local organizations are simply asking for acknowledgement by transit officials. The CTA claims that service along 31st Street was originally cut in 1997 due to low ridership, but Ma argues that the people who the decision affected were the people who needed it most. “If one person needs the bus more than someone who has a car, shouldn’t it be more important that the first person receives this service?” she asks. While a bus would be a major victory on many levels, the immediate issue is a lack of communication between the CTA and the people it serves.

“We just want a confirmation that the CTA sympathizes with us on a human level,” Ma reflects, a sentiment she said many expressed at the August meeting. “But they kind of stared blankly at me.”