Jane Fentress

Steve James has an uncanny ability to defy the observer effect—a force that dictates that mere observation will change the natural course of things. In his films, the director of the documentaries “Hoop Dreams” and “The Interrupters” has been able to recede into the background and let events transpire as if a gaping camera lens were invisible.

“There is no way to test, without the camera being there, to see what would have happened.  Maybe in some alternate universe you could, but I think as a filmmaker what you try to do is spend enough time in a community so that there is a level of comfort,” he said.

In “The Interrupters,” released last year, James gave the United States an intimate and heart-wrenching portrait of one of the most violent years on Chicago’s South Side. The film takes viewers through Englewood: verdant parks, hot dog stands, people chatting on the front steps of two-flats—scenes familiar to any South Side resident. However, shrines memorializing the fallen dot curbs in front of corner stores and alongside boulevards. Bottles of Hennesy, bunches of artificial flowers and Mylar balloons pile beneath handmade posters eulogizing loved ones.

Perhaps this intimacy creates scenes that are too close for the viewer’s comfort. Shots are taken from alongside the hospital bed of a man shot in gang crossfire and alongside the casket of a murdered teenager, baseball cap and folded hands in full view.

“The stories I am attracted to are ones in which I encourage the audience to really think about the story, or someone’s life or someone’s situation and think about it from a complicated place of both trying to understand it and not judge it,” James explains.

“The Interrupters” is James’ most recent film and his sixth documentary with Chicago-based Kartemquin Films. The film follows Ceasefire, a Chicago program that hires former criminals to diffuse potentially violent scenarios in Chicago through peaceful interventions.

James was able to gain such intimate access by building unique trust with his subjects. “The people that you’re dealing with on a regular basis have to trust you,” he says. “The more people feel some sense of control over the situation, paradoxically, the more they will allow you in and give you access to things that are quite intimate.”

“You think [your momma’s] using?” violence interrupter Ameena Matthews whispers to eighteen-year-old Caprysha in the movie. The girl nods solemnly. A later cut shows Ameena and the girl at a nail salon. The camera zooms in as Caprysha admires her new neon-green manicure.

This sort of trust takes time to build.  For “The Interrupters,” James followed Ceasefire for an entire year.  For “Hoop Dreams,” James and his team spent four years following the lives of two high school boys. “When you spend months and even years with someone, there is a sort of different relationship there.”

This is to say, James has put a lot of time into his films over the years. But documentaries weren’t his original destination. “I first fell in love with movies,” James, now 57, said.  He studied radio communications at James Madison University. But a film appreciation class “really kind of sealed the deal.”

“I think documentary sort of blended both my loves: that journalistic impulse with my love of movies.  And so documentaries kinda’ became the thing I did the most.” After gaining a Master’s in communications from Southern Illinois University, James set out to make films of his own. Since 1986, James has directed over a dozen films, TV documentaries, and dramatic films.

“The Interrupters” was inspired by “There are No Children Here,” a book by journalist Alex Kotlowitz exploring the parallels between urban violence and epidemiology. Kotlowitz, incidentally, lives down the block from James in Oak Park, Illinois.  At a certain point, a light went off in James’ head.

“I called him up and I said, ‘I think you’ve really got something here that would make a great basis to do as a documentary,” recounted James. “And so we set about to pursue that.”

James works with a genre of documentary called cinema verité—French for “true cinema.”  But James acknowledges that Truth is a nuanced entity.

“Of course, in the area of truth it is ‘whose truth is it?’ My truth of observing and filming is of necessity a different truth than the people who live in those communities, even those that I am filming. I think for any kind of journalist or filmmaker you have to have an internal compass that guides you in terms of what you think is truthful and honest versus what might just be convenient or dramatic.”

The neighborhoods James investigates are regions of the city that are known for little else aside from urban blight, poverty, and violence—images perpetuated by the evening news and other popular media.

“One of the duties you have as a storyteller is to try and to anticipate the audience’s response to these people that you have documented and do your best to undermine their stereotypes while being true and honest,” he said. “I think part of the goal of making a film or writing a good story is to dig beneath those stereotypes and someone’s contradictions and complexities and present to the audience.”

Yet James acknowledged that he has his own set of stereotypes. “I sometimes need to learn the same kind of lessons over and over again. No matter where you’re from or no matter what your life has been, many of us want the same sorts of things. And that it’s easy to misjudge people when you first meet them. And I’ve done that many times.”

Yet, he says, “It’s exciting actually when your stereotypes get undermined. I think that’s one of the reasons to make films.”

James makes a special effort to get feedback from the people he films, unlike some documentary filmmakers who don’t allow subjects to see the film before it is released.  Not doing so, said James, is “not only wrongheaded but maybe cowardly.”

“I have had situations where subjects were angry about things they saw [in my film],” he admits. “But in all those cases, I came out with respect intact between us because I did what I said I would do: I faced them and heard from them and responded to them.”

James has garnered enough awards to back the currency of a small country—including a premier at Sundance, a retrospective at the International Film Festival Amsterdam, and the Independent Spirit Award for best documentary. “Hoop Dreams,” was dubbed “best film of the 1990’s” by Roger Ebert, and “The Interrupters” has received wide acclaim.

In spite of it all, James simply wishes he were a better filmmaker. “I always wish I was a better filmmaker, but, I mean, I don’t beat myself up about this.”

Cyrus Dowlatshahi

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Cyrus Dowlatshahi is a 30-year-old Hyde Park native, Iranian-American, Vassar alum, and massage therapist. To explore a side of Chicago more often misunderstood than seen, Dowlatshahi is taking on his preferred designation—filmmaker.

The project sounds quite simple—with $25,000 raised from donations on Kickstarter.com, Dowlatshahi is going to film a feature-length documentary about the South Side. He’s not quite sure what he’s looking for, but he wants to document the beauty strangers and residents alike often miss. Working mostly in Englewood and Washington Park, the film will focus on familiar scenes—there will be hair salons, churches, and Fourth of July celebrations.

“There are wonderful things to share and some not-so-wonderful things,” he says, acknowledging the reality of the South Side’s negative image. “I want to help people share the good things. It feels good to tell stories, and when it comes to this project, people are proud of where they come from.”

Dowlatshahi got an unconventional start in filming when he was a student at the UofC Laboratory Schools. After copying the lettering on official UofC vehicles, Dowlatshahi and his friends made a stencil in the same typeface that read, “University of Chicago Secret Police.” They painted this new logo onto Dowlatshahi’s camouflage-print car and began following UCPD and fire activity in Hyde Park and beyond.

“That’s how I started filming,” says Dowlatshahi. “I had a little Handycam, and we’d edit the movies on iMovie. This was the very beginning of cheap digital video software. People were too weirded out for anything bad to happen. It was just too funny for anyone to get upset.” When Dowlatshahi returned from college—with a BA in philosophy and zero credits from the film department—he continued the Secret Police project.

“A friend of mine was in AA and so the only thing to do at night that had nothing to do with alcohol was drive around and make these videos.”

At some point Dowlatshahi’s filmmaking became more than a hobby. To keep making movies, Dowlatshahi went to massage school. He worked as a part-time massage therapist for five years, earning the money he needed to support his filming. But his growing passion needed direction. “After a certain point,” Dowlatshahi says, “I wasn’t submitting movies to festivals or contests, so I knew I needed something else.”

That something else took Dowlatshahi away from the South Side to D.C. and New York. “When I first got to the East Coast, I was an unpaid intern because it was the only way into the business. So, I was 27 and living in my grandma’s basement, interning for a TV production studio.” TV didn’t suit Dowlatshahi, but he eventually worked his way up to Al Jazeera English.

While Dowlatshahi enjoyed working for a major news outlet, he wanted the chance to create his own project. “Of course the dream is to make your own film, to be in control over not only the subject matter but how you tell the story,” he says. “I wanted to control how much of a standard documentary this dream project was or how artsy-fartsy it was. I had to try that and see if people liked it, if it was any good, if it made sense to people who weren’t just my friends and family.”

Dowlatshahi’s first plan was to make a film about Iran, which he visited for the first time in January of last year. However, Dowlatshahi was dissuaded after contacting Iranian filmmakers about the project: “They all wrote me back saying, ‘Dude, you don’t want to do this. It’s a pain. They’re expensive permits.’ Plus, because I’m a dual citizen, I’d have to deal with my military service.”

The South Side of Chicago was an easy second choice. Growing up, Dowlatshahi spent most of his time in Hyde Park. He admits that while he was a kid, he just “didn’t care” about getting to know the surrounding area.  He’s clearly changed his mind. “The area is ripe for documenting,” Dowlatshahi says. “There’s so much here that is awesome. It’s easier, too. I don’t have to buy international plane tickets or deal with the Islamic Republic Film Permit Department. I can just film.”

But it hasn’t exactly been that easy. Chicago also requires film permits, and it costs $400 a day to film in Chicago parks. Dowlatshahi hoped to have the fee waived by offering free photography classes in public parks, but “the City didn’t really go for that.”  While his Kickstarter account helped him raise the $25,000 required to get the project going, he estimates that he will need an additional $40,000 to finish the film. So far, the vast majority of the money has come from family and friends. “This isn’t unusual,” says Dowlatshahi. “All first-time filmmakers get their money from friends and family. It’s a card that I can play one time.”

Family has helped in more ways than one. His mother’s former caretaker, Ethel, is a resident of Englewood. By spending time in Ethel’s home, Dowlatshahi and his camera were able to gain access to that neighborhood.

Nonetheless, Dowlatshahi wasn’t surprised when people resisted his presence—no one likes being filmed by strangers. In fact, Dowlatshahi readily admits that there are good reasons to avoid being on camera: “Non-fiction films thrive on making people look stupid. They thrive on embarrassment. I have to assure people that I’m not trying to do that. I want the opposite. Having someone to make a connection helps.”

Despite being associated with Ethel, Dowlatshahi met resistance from drug dealers who operated in the area. “There are people who engage in drug activity in the neighborhood, and they obviously do not like cameras being around. But they just need to know and be assured by someone they trust that I’m not there to film anyone who doesn’t want to be filmed.” Contacts reached out to the dealers and made it clear that Dowlatshahi was not interested in getting anyone in trouble. “In any situation you’re liable to get messed with unless you are with someone from the neighborhood. Obviously I stick out because I’m not black and I have a camera.”

But Dowlatshahi couldn’t film just one block. While driving around one day, he noticed a restaurant called Pete’s Italian Beef. “I used to go to a different Pete’s in high school, and when I saw this one, I had to see if I could order the same chopsteak sandwich. But I got talking with Tammy who works behind the counter, and eventually I talked my way behind the bulletproof glass.”

Since then, Tammy has opened many doors for Dowlatshahi. One afternoon, she took him to a hair appointment at Studio 59—a new scene Dowlatshahi could film. In one shot uploaded to his website, the frame is still on a woman’s head as Veronica, a stylist, goes to work. The footage is sped up, and a head of hair is transformed into an arrangement of beautiful black and blonde spikes.

At Studio 59, Dowlatshahi also met Jerk Man. According to Dowlatshahi, “When he saw me in the salon with the camera, he said, ‘Oh man, you gotta come out with me, I’ll show you the South Side.’ And he did—he drives around all the neighborhoods everywhere, selling his jerk chicken and curry goat. Jerk Man is really proud of showing off all the areas he knows.”

Dowlatshahi is not entirely sure what all of this is going to add up to. He has other footage. During the summer, he took shots of Washington Park when it “looked like a scene from ‘The Fast and the Furious.’” Vintage cars with modern engines were lined up, while owners mingled in the park. A few weeks ago, Dowlatshahi filmed a man dressed in a Statue of Liberty outfit describing the gang boundaries around 79th and Halsted. All of this together won’t tell a story with a beginning and ending—but that’s not the point. The South Side doesn’t have an ending.

What does matter is that Dowlatshahi gets good footage: “Good footage is telling footage. Good footage is people being real. Good footage is somebody being genuine, or stuff that is intimate, or stuff that is undeniable.”

His footage is beautiful and he sees no conflict between finding true stories and portraying them in a way that looks good. Dowlatshahi also feels that it’s not hard for his footage to look good. In his opinion, “The South Side landscape is rustic, I love the empty lots, not when they’re littered with trash, but there’s lots of big trees and its pretty in the summer and fall.” A scene from the Fourth of July demonstrates the beauty Dowlatshahi is able to capture. The shot begins level with damp, green grass. The camera slowly glides to the right as fireworks are lit, their yellow and orange sparks illuminating shadows. The greens flash from light to dark.

But not everything he has filmed will make it past the final cut. In fact, Dowlatshahi feels that he has only one complete scene at this point. It was filmed at a party in an empty building Dowlatshahi attended with a friend of Tammy’s nephew. “People weren’t there to drink, they were there to dance, and it was great,” says Dowlatshahi. As he was filming, however, an argument broke out between security and some people trying to gain entrance. In an attempt to curb potential gang activity, the party prohibited guests from wearing white shirts or hats. However, some people made it in despite violating the dress code. When some other kids were refused entry, an argument broke out and a gun was flashed.

“Shit happens and it’s over silly disputes like this, but then the guy in charge came up and was like, ‘It’s cool, but none of this gang shit.’ The kids were like, ‘fuck that.’ It’s funny because no one is there to get into a fight, they’re there to dance and talk to girls. The rule that they were getting upset about was in place to prevent violence and fights.”

During the party, Dowlatshahi had a mic on the security guard and got footage of the whole dispute. However, completeness isn’t the only thing he is looking for: “There are all these different things about life on the South Side that are unique to life on the South Side. That party was an example of one of those things. Also, it was an example of a situation that could have escalated to the level of violence you read about in the paper. But that didn’t happen, and I got coverage of what the issues were and how they developed and ended. And, the lens cap wasn’t on my camera, so there it is.” In the end, the party was broken up by the police, but only because it was disturbing a retirement home nearby.

Other scenes are more powerful because they are incomplete. During a snowstorm in January, Dowlatshahi captured a homeless man pushing a train of three grocery carts into the wind. When he approached the man, he was asked for five dollars in exchange. After taking the money, the homeless man offered to pose, but Dowlatshahi said no. Instead, he set up his small dolly so the camera could glide forward with the man’s march through the snow. The only footage he has is of the man walking, with no answers to where or why.

Piecing these scenes into a film will be a challenge. “Editing is problem solving—you only have this footage and you need to make the best of it. You need to make a story out of it.”

In the end, Dowlatshahi hasn’t yet decided what he’s going to do with the film. “It will be in some theater or festival. But, like anybody else, you just want to make a movie and have as many people see it as possible.” In this case, the film’s value really does rely on how many people see it. Our city of neighborhoods is also a city of divisions—Dowlatshahi’s film could break down barriers.

“Most people don’t go to the South Side, and South Siders know that. People focus on the gang violence and poverty—and that’s definitely one part, but there’s so much more than that.”

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.

*   *   *   *

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!”

*   *   *   *

“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.”

Maggie Sivit

There’s a common question asked to visitors of Englewood and Auburn-Gresham: “Do you know where you are?” If you’re walking in the neighborhoods west of the Dan Ryan and south of 55th, and a worried, well-meaning passerby thinks you might not be from the area, you might get asked yourself.

Look around. You might see a train rumbling on rusted Green Line tracks passing over an empty lot of cracked pavement. Or smoke rising from an oil drum at a neighborhood barbecue. Or what was once the South Side Masonic Temple, a brick colossus with white paint flecking from the columns and windowsills decaying behind a wire fence, a thick crop of weeds breaking through the mortar.

If you’re not careful, the histories of Englewood, West Englewood, and Auburn-Gresham can read like bottomless tragedies. The Great Depression hit Englewood and West Englewood hard, and real estate values dropped as buildings aged and resources dried up. The Black Belt expanded southward and many African American families moved in to take the place of the European immigrants who had migrated farther west. But racist housing and lending practices prevented any substantial investment in the communities and contributed to their decline. The construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway in the early 1960s displaced thousands and drew the east-west color line deeper into the city’s geography. Auburn-Gresham, located farther south, has historically been home to a slightly wealthier community living in single-family homes. Nonetheless, all three neighborhoods have suffered from violence, crime, and a withering population over the last forty years.

And yet, there are signs of renewal. Residents are mobilizing to stop gangs and bring peace to the streets. At St. Sabina’s Church, a pastor and his congregation have campaigned against drug use and founded a number of social service organizations. And in 2007, Kennedy-King College opened, bringing in educational opportunities and spurring some of the first commercial construction in years.

Keep looking. There are townhouses, barbershops, a new college campus, and churches with committed congregations. A man looks under the hood of his car and tinkers with the engine. Neighbors chat on stoops and under streetlights. Learn where you are.

Best Hot Dog
Fat Johnnie’s Famous Red Hots
The procession of car dealerships along Western Avenue is briefly interrupted by a white picket fence emblazoned with large, candy-red capital letters proclaiming, “FAT JOHNNIES.” Next to the fence, an unassuming white shack stands, its roof slumping a little. This roadside hut is a 39-year-old family-run institution, serving up some of the best hot dogs in the city, as some fans boldly argue. The son and nephew of the actual Fat Johnnie now manage the hot dog stand while living in the home next door. When we asked Johnnie’s son what their best dog is, his cousin quickly interjected, “the mighty dog, no doubt.” The mighty dog is an all-beef hot dog stuffed inside a cornmeal and beef tamale, stuffed in a poppy-seed bun and dressed with cheese. For a quarter they will add the Chicago-dog works—a sliced cucumber seasoned with celery salt, fresh tomatoes, diced onions, and Chicago-river-green relish. Instead of fries they serve nachos dripping with cheese and smothered in chili. Wash it all down with a suicide, the fountain drink all-in-one sampler popular with rebellious ten-year-olds. Yet far from inducing suicide, sitting at a Fat Johnnies picnic table scarfing their tamales and dogs will have you affirming life, Johnny, and da Bears. 7232 S. Western Ave. Monday-Saturday, 11am-6:30pm; Sunday, 11am-3:30pm. (773)737-6294 (J. Michael Eugenio)

Best Take-Out Soul Food
BJ’s Market and Bakery
Though it looks like a Boston Market, don’t hold that against BJ’s. With striped awnings and an oval logo, and a case filled with metal trays of American home-style dishes, BJ’s does resemble that other chicken chain. But BJ’s is a local business through and through. John Meyer, the owner and head chef of BJ’s worked at restaurants across the city before starting a business in his own neighborhood in 2001. The restaurant’s name is taken from the first letters of Meyers’ two children’s names. Like any soul food joint worth its salt, BJ’s has thick, flavorful rib tips and fried chicken. The mustard-fried catfish is their signature: its breaded exterior is slightly crispy but the fish stays tender. The dish comes with a special tangy-sweet mustard sauce for dipping and your choice of sides, but good luck choosing! They’ve got baked mac’n’cheese, black-eyed peas, collard greens with smoked turkey, buttery corn, and sweet potatoes that taste like Thanksgiving. There’s ample seating, but few customers use it. Most seem to come in after work and place a big order to go. With its comforting, slow-cooked staples and fast service, BJ’s offers take-out that almost passes for a home-cooked meal. 1156 W. 79th St. Monday-Thursday, 7am-9pm; Friday-Saturday, 7am-10pm; Sunday, 7am-8pm. (773)723-7000. bjsmarket.com (Rachel Wiseman)

Best Food of the Gods
Reese’s Gourmet Mana
Located at 1022 ½ W. 63rd, this little pudding shop is—as the “half” in its address implies—a hole-in-the wall in the truest sense. The exterior of the shop is basically just a yellow banner hung over a gated door. Inside, the walls are bare, except for a dry erase board with the daily flavors and a poster of the Ten Commandments. The store’s simplicity befits the divine product they peddle: a custard-like pudding garnished with Nilla wafers called mana. The classic “banana mana” is silky and sweet with slices of real banana at the bottom of the cup. The orange turtle gives off only the subtlest citrus notes, so the nutty caramel-chocolate topping really shines. When we asked what kind to buy, the jovial woman behind the counter detailed the virtues of each variety. While she’s normally a chocolate woman, the lemon mana is “one-of-the kind,” while the strawberry mana makes her feel “all tingly,” just like her beau does. These delicious treats are only $3 per cup or two for $5, so there’s no harm in trying more than one kind. In Englewood’s food desert, mana does seem like a godsend for the gourmand. 1022 ½ W. 63rd St. Monday-Saturday, 11am-7pm. (773)418-0790. reesesmanaflavors.com (Rachel Wiseman)

Best Roller Rink
MLK, Jr. Park & Family Entertainment Center
With no grass, trees, streetlamps, playgrounds, or benches, this isn’t your average park. Instead of a sun above, you’ll find disco lights, and the show-stopping moves happen don’t happen on the court, but on roller skates. Entry prices vary, but go as low as 50 cents on Thursday and Friday afternoons. Skate rentals are reasonable, too. And though it is an astounding value, forget about the prices—the experience is golden. You rent skates, get out on the waxed hardwood floor, and wobble-glide in circles for hours like you would at any other roller rink. But here, they don’t play lame jock jams or moldy oldies. The DJ plays hip-hop radio hits, and couples skate hand-in-hand to a Weezy track. Kids wearing adorable birthday tutus try to stay balanced, while the older skaters will make your jaw drop as you watch them pirouette and get low. “I’ve been coming here since I was a shawty,” said one of the most gifted skaters. He pointed at a group of kids struggling to reach the joystick of a claw machine even with the boost from their skates, whom earlier in the night he had taught a couple of moves. “Like them shawties.” 1219 W. 76th St. See website for schedule of skating times and entry fees. (312)747-2602. mlkskating.com (Rachel Wiseman)

Best Garden of Contradictory Power Relations
Renaissance Park
An English garden and a monument to prominent African-American figures seem odd bedfellows, but they come together nicely in Renaissance Park. Once a derelict lot at 79th and Throop, the park was built in 2000 as a symbol and reflection of the revitalization of the neighborhood. The half-block of well-maintained grounds makes for a good picnic spot, while benches offer ideal seating for a good read. Neatly trimmed hedges form geometric patterns, while colorful flowers are a delight to the eyes and nose. At the center of the park, a modern black granite sculpture fountain honors a number of heroes with ties to the South Side. A pyramid of large granite stones are engraved with the names of a number of prominent African-American figures—Martin Luther King, Jr., Muhammad Ali, Mahalia Jackson, and Harold Washington, to name a few. Water trickles down from the pyramid to a granite pillar on the other side of the monument, a statement on the power of role models to inspire future change. Judging by the signs of rebirth around Auburn-Gresham, the legacy of community activism and leadership flows on. 1300 W. 79th St. Open dusk-dawn. (312)747-7661 (Rachel Wiseman)

Jane Fentress

The Raber House, a four-story Italianate building in Englewood, is a relic of the South Side’s aristocratic past. The structure, commissioned by politician John Raber in 1870, was once the centerpiece of a great, thirteen-acre estate, surrounded by evergreen hedges and small man-made lakes. Now, however, Raber’s mansion at 5760 S. Lafayette Ave. is marred by decay. The sidewalks leading up to the house are cracked and crowded with crabgrass, and spindly, overgrown trees scratch the tops of cars passing on the street. The windows of the Raber House are boarded, its backyard is filled with trash and broken glass, and, though the building has been registered and protected by the city as a Chicago landmark, there seems to be little capable of saving the home from the surrounding urban blight.

While a few voices have spoken up about what to do with the historic property, the strongest call for change has come from a soft-spoken, 66-year-old man with an unusual plan. Bill Lavicka, an eccentric rehabber and preservationist, has proposed turning the Raber House into a winery and vineyard. The rehab initiative, which he refers to as the “Chateau Chicago” project, aims to transform the long-abandoned building into a multiuse space for grape cultivation and wine sales. Chateau Chicago is a very personal project for Lavicka, who has been making wine in the bathroom of his home for the past 35 years, though the project will also have reprucussions in a broader social setting.

Englewood “needs a spark,” Lavicka said in his April 21 interview with the Chicago Tribune. He hopes to strike the match with Chateau Chicago, which has the potential to inject Englewood with a new dose of energy and capital. Lavicka was not available for comment before this story went to print.

Others, however, argue that a winery isn’t really what’s in the neighborhood’s best interest.

“Oh God no, we don’t need wine!” shouts Pastor Bernice Jenkins. This is the first time she’s heard about Lavicka’s Chateau Chicago project. Her church, the Deliverance Healing Temple, is one of the only buildings on the block that has stood against the tide of Englewood’s decline. Though the white-and-red painted church stands out prominently from its surroundings and is located just a few doors down from the Raber House, its Pastor says she hasn’t heard anything from Lavicka.

“If they’re going to turn it into anything, they need to make a shelter,” she suggests, “a shelter for the drugs.”

Englewood has one of the highest rates of drug abuse and addiction in Chicago, so it’s no surprise that the arrival of a new liquor shop is viewed with some suspicion. Though Jenkins is not a resident of the neighborhood, she believes that her role as a local pastor has opened her eyes to much of its ugliness. “Until recently there was a house of prostitution right over there,” she says, pointing across the street. “Thank the Lord they shut that down. But we still have problems, and we don’t need wine.”

A few of the congregants at the church heard about the project after seeing Lavicka interviewed on the local Fox news affiliate. Their reactions to the plans for Raber House were less critical than their Pastor’s, but there was a distinct note of skepticism about the feasibility of the vineyard in those gathered this past Sunday at the Deliverance Healing Temple. “I just don’t understand how or why he’s going to try and grow grapes here,” said one member.

Despite the concerns of some in the community, it is now fairly certain that Lavicka’s winemaking project will get underway. Chateau Chicago’s innovative plan has attracted the attention of city politicians and urban planners, and 20th Ward Alderman Willie Cochran publicly backed the proposal. According to the plan, Lavicka would purchase the land and the winery would be accompanied by other renovation projects in the area, including a baseball field and an urban farm.

While Pastor Jenkins may advocate for drug treatment centers and other government institutions to address Englewood’s existing problems, Englewood may need something more than these “band-aid” programs, which only address the symptoms of larger problems of substance abuse and economic stagnation. As Englewood attempts to revive its economy, community initiatives and creative business models like Chateau Chicago’s could make a perfect pairing.

The event, with a competitive section for paired presentations and a noncompetitive section for independent performances, is an extension of Louder Than a Bomb (LTAB), the teen poetry slam competition founded in 2001. Inspired by LTAB, the Englewood Academy slam was entirely the initiative of South Side teachers, and featured the teams they have coached in a wide inter-city network of young poets—even the event’s emcee was an educator. “We wanted to take it upon ourselves to continue the community thing that LTAB has become,” said Melissa Hughes, an English teacher and one of the organizers of the event. “The kids were skeptical at first,” added Dave Stieber, another organizer. “But then we took them to Louder Than a Bomb and they saw how cool poetry slams were and really went for it.”

With their voices racing up and down the cadences of their self-crafted poems the young performers told tales of frustrated love, sexual encounters, music, race, and what it feels like to be born while your twin dies.

“I live in the town of the crazies” breathed one of the contenders, Zoe, crescendoing mightily through her poem about life in Englewood. “Look down other mighty nations, a utopia that reached the brim edge of existence!” The performers linked phrases with tightly enunciated sibilance, they spat plosive consonants, they closed their eyes and gestured madly. “It’s very lively, that’s what I like about it,” said Zoe. “I just want to go up on stage and have the audience listen.”

“Yes, the kids love to perform, it comes so naturally to them,” said Hughes. And indeed, even when the poetry was over, six boys took the stage bobbing and weaving in a synchronized dance. A brother and sister grabbed microphones and began to sing as DJ Itchy Fingers whooped from the sound box, and the teacher-cum-emcee hopped down letting his happy students swarm the stage.

Courtesy of TL Barrett

The Life Center Church of God in Christ sits on the corner of Garfield and Indiana, just east of the honorary two-and-a-half block Rev. T.L. Barrett, Jr. Blvd. The boulevard’s namesake is sitting in a pew close to the pulpit. On the second Sunday morning of the year, he’s just been introduced by Minister Camara to a standing ovation by over a hundred beaming congregants. It is his birthday—or rather, as the bulletin reads, and as Minister Camara reminds everyone—his “earth day”. And this is Pastor Barrett, after all: the man who organized the Life Center Church just west of Washington Park, who twenty-odd years ago was implicated in a pyramid scheme, and who in 1971 recorded a rare gospel record with South Side youth that was rereleased to great acclaim this past year.

The album “Like A Ship…(Without A Sail)” has been described by just about every music review site as a holy grail of gospel. For the 39 years since its small-scale release, collectors and gospel fans have had to search through milk crates of used vinyl to find the recording, which was originally distributed mostly at church functions and neighborhood events. “I think it took about 45 seconds into track one and we were instantly hooked,” said Matt Sullivan, co-owner and founder of Light in the Attic Records. The album was licensed to Light in the Attic by Numero Group, an archival record label based in Little Village that spent four years trying to obtain the license from Barrett. “Like A Ship” was re-released last July with three bonus tracks on LP, CD, and MP3. Eight tracks of funky gospel-soul goodness, “Like A Ship” sounds as though it’s being streamed right out of the sanctuary. And with the 40-person Youth For Christ Choir backing Barrett, there’s an infectiousness to the sound that transcends any objections about the record being “unprofessional,” which it is—Barrett is a self-trained musician leading Washington Park youth, after all.

Born in New York City in 1944, Barrett spent much of his early life in Chicago where he attended public schools on the South Side until his dismissal from Wendell Phillips High School. The dismissal, coupled with the death of his father that same year, prompted him to return to New York in 1960. Home in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, Barrett earned a G.E.D. and went on to graduate from Bethel Bible Institute, where he honed his piano skills. Returning to Chicago in 1967, he became the pastor of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church the following year. It was here at Mt. Zion that he recorded “Like A Ship” and began to gain recognition throughout the city as a community leader and an activist who used music as a means of enriching the lives of youth. His successful ministry at Mt. Zion led him to organize the Life Center Church in 1976. Barrett would eventually grow close to Jesse Jackson and Eugene Sawyer, the second black mayor of Chicago, before being implicated in a pyramid scheme in 1988 and ordered to either pay restitution or face jail time.

Now, on a Sunday in 2011, Barrett’s congregants sing “Happy Birthday” in celebration of his 67th —this is his 68th year, the preacher clarifies; he’s only just fulfilled his 67th. Barrett, funny and charismatic, notes all this on the pulpit, in semi-conversation with one of the congregants standing next to him. Wearing a suit and a round white hat, Barrett looks much older than his “…Without A Sail” self: he has long white sideburns—neatly trimmed—and moves slowly and deliberately, appearing for the first time fifteen minutes into the two-and-a-half-hour service. He is loved by his congregation and by his choir, and after tithes are collected for the church, everyone moves to the center aisle to wish him well, shake his hand, and wish him a happy birthday. A birthday offering is taken up—envelopes are handed out with the church bulletin—and a gift is collected for the Pastor, for the “spiritual leader [who] has always said ‘my church first’” and has, according to another minister, even taken one-third of his regular salary when times were especially hard upon the church. Following the Benediction, a celebratory meal for Pastor Barrett is held in Barrett Hall. “Joyful Noise”—track number six on “Like A Ship”—would have served as an appropriate soundtrack.

So which story of Barrett’s life deserves the headline: the passionate preacher, the accused schemer, or the gospel musician now clapping at the head of his congregation? The youth choir that backs up Barrett on track five sings it best: “Nobody knows…”

“Like a Ship” is available for purchase at lightintheattic.net

(Claire Zhou)

“Census count, twen-ty-ten!” they shout. “This is for everyone to be in!”

The kids are instructed to place fliers in every mailbox, except those belonging to houses that are boarded up or vacant (of which there are many). Every so often the cheers of these young activists are drowned out by the sound of police sirens just a few blocks away—indirect reminders of why the 2010 Census is so important to these Englewood residents, and why community organizations have taken such an active interest in the census this year.

“March to the Mailbox” day, which took place last Saturday, was the joint effort of New Birth Church of God In Christ and Teamwork Englewood’s “Complete Count” committee to remind residents to return their census forms. Since autumn of last year, Teamwork Englewood has launched an aggressive campaign to disseminate accurate information about the census and to prevent Englewood from being undercounted.

In 2000, only between 32 and 45 percent of Englewood households returned their census forms by mail, a figure even lower than the alarming 58 percent overall return rate of the city of Chicago.

“We saw the numbers after 2000 and recognized that in our community, the response was less than 50 percent. So when you equate the amount of money that was lost, the amount of resources that we did not have available in the last ten years, the condition of the neighborhood and what a difference that money could have made, it’s just common sense,” said Pastor Willard Payton of New Birth Church. “We have to get involved. We’ve got to make it better for the future, for this community.”

The census, which is taken every ten years by the U.S. Census Bureau, is used to determine how over $400 billion of federal funding is allocated among state and city governments. Moreover, it gauges a neighborhood’s need for community centers, roads, schools, and other public facilities and services, helping the local government to make important planning decisions.

In order to counter the misconceptions and fears surrounding the census, a citywide grassroots movement of volunteers has arisen to assist the regional census bureau. In Englewood, as in much of the city, some people simply are not aware of the importance of the census to public services and aid; others in the community fear that giving their information to the government will lead to their arrest for past criminal offenses. In Englewood, a predominantly African-American community, some residents also refuse to participate because they are offended by one of the census’s designations of their race as “Negro.” For these reasons, Payton believes those who already live in the neighborhood are best equipped to help residents overcome their mistrust of the census and to reassure them of its confidentiality.

With the help of organizations like Teamwork Englewood, an accurate census has the potential to change the landscape of the community by bringing in resources to reestablish a stable workforce. According to Payton, once the need for better infrastructure, security, and education is met, the community will once again draw in “stakeholder” residents—people who are not just there to live, but also to invest and further revitalize the area.

Community members hope that the census will address the immediate need for community centers and afterschool programs for children. Increased funding for such facilities and services can go a long way in keeping kids off the streets and reducing violent crimes, especially during the summertime.

“[The census is about] giving back to the community, helping others to make our environment a better place,” says ten-year-old Shawnah Ewing. “I want it to be safe and nice, and I don’t want any of our alleys messed up. This is where I live.”

(Mehveş Konuk)

The housing crisis is responsible for much of the movement in Woodlawn, according to Mattie Butler, executive director of Woodlawn East Community and Neighbors (WECAN). “People are moving because they lost one place, so they move in with relatives or friends and in about a month they have to move out because their friends start to have a problem [paying their rent or mortgage]. They keep on moving within Woodlawn till they exhaust their options.” WECAN provides affordable housing and supportive services to Woodlawn residents, like those displaced by the 557 foreclosures that occurred in the neighborhood this past January. With many cases still pending, Butler predicts that the worst of the foreclosures is yet to come.

Woodlawn is also one of many neighborhoods in Chicago undergoing gentrification—or, at least, it was before the housing market collapsed. “We have more affluent people who have moved to Woodlawn, but now they’re not moving that often because the housing market has got a great big hole in the bottom of it,” Butler says. But this hasn’t prevented the displacement of low-income residents. “We were having a problem with poor people being pushed out because rental housing was used for condo conversion, but it didn’t stop fast enough to keep people from being moved,” explains Butler. Developers were hit by the foreclosures too, and now, at the same time as many struggle to afford housing, “there’s a lot of new construction sitting on the ground, vacant and boarded-up.”

The foreclosure crisis is also driving an increase in movement throughout the South Side. According to Carlos Nelson, executive director of the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation, people in his neighborhood “are typically moving around just for additional housing.” They tend to stay within about a five-mile radius that includes Englewood and Grand Crossing. Jacques Conway, a member of the community organization Teamwork Englewood, adds, “People move frequently based on how many times they run out of money to stay in a particular apartment. Often, when they know they have to move or they will be evicted, instead of paying their landlord back – which they know they can’t do – they use it as a security deposit to rent at another place. They usually stay in the community, but either move when they get behind on rent, or when the building is in such disrepair that they don’t want to rent there anymore.”

This process can quickly become a self-perpetuating cycle, as each move leads to greater instability. In a November 2009 report, researchers at D.C.-based think tank the Urban Institute dubbed this process “residential churning.” “Churning movers,” or people who move frequently without improving their situations, made up nearly half of all moving families in ten U.S. cities surveyed in the study (Chicago was not among them). These families tend to be young and low-income, and dissatisfied and disconnected from their neighborhoods, though they rarely move far outside them.

One woman who fits the profile of a churning mover is Cheryl*, a 38-year-old mother of three. She has moved around a lot in her lifetime, twice due to evictions. “I had to start over once, then I got divorced and I had to start over after that. Now I’m at a place in my life where I’m starting over again.”

One eviction followed her divorce. With her husband gone and without a job, “I didn’t have the means to care for the apartment or pay the rent,” she says. The second happened because, she says, “I was living a life at that time where I was reckless—I wasn’t too smart. Today I’m a different person. I think more about the consequences of my actions.”

Cheryl currently lives in Englewood with her children and partner, and she wants to move. “There’s a lot of open [criminal] activity here,” she explains. She would like to live in a more culturally and economically diverse neighborhood such as Oak Lawn, where she lived several years ago, or Hyde Park. In the latter, she says, “everything’s convenient. It’s a thriving area. There are lots of different places that my children can become a part of—a wealth of things going on in the area.”

Cheryl’s evictions pose an obstacle—she has “horrible credit,” she says, and her partner has none. But as she tries to start over this time, she’s in a much better position. “I have a different team of people with me. I have a companion now who helps me with everything, which makes it a lot easier. I have resources now.” She’s also working with an organization in Hyde Park to try to find an affordable apartment there.

Cheryl may have been a churning mover in the past, but she’s in a good position to become what the Urban Institute calls an “up-and-out mover” if she relocates to a higher-income community with more opportunities. The very fact that she knows about neighborhoods like Oak Lawn and Hyde Park puts her at a significant advantage.

Chicagoans tend to be familiar with neighborhoods in which their own racial group predominates, according to the 2008 study “Racial Blind Spots: Black-White-Latino Differences in Community Knowledge.” The study, led by University of Illinois-Chicago professor Maria Krysan, found that people decide where to move based primarily on information from social networks and realtors, two sources that usually resemble them racially, thus reinforcing the already extreme segregation of Chicago’s neighborhoods.

But as Krysan and her colleagues found—and Cheryl attests—people want to live in more diverse neighborhoods than they actually do. The fact that African-Americans, for example, tend to congregate in particular neighborhoods has more to do with the fear of discrimination elsewhere, plus the aforementioned “blind spots,” than with an innate preference to be around people of the same race.

A new nonprofit called MoveSmart is trying to remedy these racial blind spots by providing movers with easy access to housing-related information. Their “Neighborhood Finder” allows users to plug in their priorities—low density or high, good schools, banks, farmers markets, libraries—and see which areas fit them best.

According to Executive Director Justin Massa, the idea for MoveSmart was born over coffee with two other fair housing advocates in Chicago. “We started realizing that lots of housing counselors don’t have access to all the rich information that’s out there.” After a lot of brainstorming, he says, “We finally got around to the concept of taking lots of data that’s complex and honing it down into a system where average people can address their own needs.”

(courtesy of Zol87/Flickr)

Now, an agency called Housing Choice Partners (HCP) has a contract with the CHA to counsel former public housing residents with Section 8 vouchers (federal rental subsidies). “We work with them pretty intensively,” says Executive Director Christine Klepper. “We lead tours so they can see what we call ‘opportunity areas,’ which are areas with a lower poverty rate and a lower [minority] population. We talk about considering the quality of schools, researching the crime rate, what kind of amenities are nearby.”

“So often, low-income people, don’t necessarily think about those things, because they’ve never had a choice,” Klepper explains. “They just kind of look around them and make decisions based on what’s nearby.” HCP’s counseling has measurable success: the average participant moves from a census tract with 60 percent poverty to one with 30 percent. But, Klepper says, “A neighborhood that has 30 percent of its residents in poverty is still a pretty distressed neighborhood. [The first move] is just a stopping point.”

Although most people don’t want to move far from the communities they know, Klepper says that “families that move to opportunity areas are always more satisfied. They like their neighborhoods better, their landlords better, their units better.”

Sometimes, we need a big move in order to get a fresh start. In economic hard times, and across the intensely divided geography of Chicago, the services that organizations like MoveSmart and HCP provide to residents can mean, at the very least, a move in the right direction.

Harvard Elementary teacher Devondra Barrett (Sam Feldman)

Harvard Elementary School in Englewood was a teacher’s worst nightmare. Kids ran in and out of classrooms in the middle of class, started fights, and swore at faculty. Principals cycled through without making any impact. In 2007, less than a third of Harvard students passed the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT), putting the school in the bottom ranks of Illinois public schools.

Then everything changed. One Friday afternoon in March of 2007, children came home from Harvard bearing notes for their parents. The news was drastic: the school was going to be handed over to a nonprofit organization, the Academy for Urban School Leadership, to be turned around. All the adults at the school—everyone from teachers to janitors—would be replaced, and when the kids returned the following fall it would be to a newly renovated building with an entirely new staff.

AUSL had received its first “turnaround” school, Sherman Elementary, the year before. Now renamed the Sherman School of Excellence, it was still in its first year of AUSL operation and no test scores were yet available to measure the school’s progress. AUSL’s skeptics, including the Chicago Teachers Union and some Harvard families, argued that there wasn’t enough evidence to justify handing another school over to AUSL, but Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan believed in the organization. As President Obama’s Secretary of Education, Duncan has made turnaround a centerpiece of his agenda and held up AUSL as an example, and his successor as schools chief, Ron Huberman, has maintained his legacy. AUSL’s portfolio this year includes eight schools, and CPS plans to hand over four more next fall.

AUSL was founded in 2001 by Martin Koldyke, a retired venture capitalist who had been involved in several other education initiatives. Koldyke’s original idea for AUSL was a resident teacher training program, where residents would be apprenticed to experienced mentor teachers in a real-world setting. He sought out a team of educators and managed to obtain the old Wright Junior College building in Portage Park, and in September 2001 AUSL opened the Chicago Academy Elementary School. Koldyke recruited Donald Feinstein, a veteran West Side educator who spent eighteen years in charge of Dett Elementary, to be the school’s first principal. “We just created a school from scratch,” says Feinstein, who is now AUSL’s executive director. “And we knew when we created the school that we wanted it to be a dual-mission school, not only educating children but training future teachers for the school district.”

Koldyke was pleased with Chicago Academy’s success, and since then AUSL has opened or taken over five more training academies. The six academies combined have graduated more than 240 teachers, over 80 percent of whom are still teaching in Chicago public schools. “We were putting them out one there, two over here, one over there, three over here,” Koldyke says, “with the predictable result that, by and large, the majority of the classrooms that these residents were put into got better. But the schools didn’t get better, because the culture didn’t change.”

Koldyke approached Duncan with his idea for turning around the lowest-performing schools in the district. “The kids stay, the adults leave, and we would train this cadre of residents and put them in en masse into a school with new leadership,” Koldyke says. Duncan, meanwhile, was launching CPS’s Renaissance 2010 initiative, which aimed to close failing schools and open one hundred new ones by 2010, a goal CPS is on track to meet. Although CPS counts AUSL’s turnaround schools toward that total, Feinstein makes clear that “to me, it was never about Renaissance 2010 with our program.” Unlike many Renaissance 2010 schools, AUSL’s turnaround schools aren’t charter schools, don’t receive Renaissance 2010 funding, and are staffed by unionized teachers.

In 2006, AUSL got their first opportunity to test out the turnaround model with Sherman Elementary. The following year Harvard was added to their portfolio. Harvard teacher Devondra Barrett remembers the reaction among the faculty when the turnaround was announced: “Sad. Chaotic. Of course there was a lot of crying. Teachers were upset, parents were upset. I felt sorry for the teachers who were about to retire, who only had one year left, a couple years left. Everybody was really close-knit because everybody had been here for so long.”

Barrett herself had strong community ties; she had grown up nearby in Englewood, gotten a Master’s degree, and then returned to teach at her old elementary school seventeen years ago. She chose to apply for a job at the new Harvard School of Excellence, although she had her doubts about AUSL. After meeting some of the new teachers, more than half of whom had just graduated from one of AUSL’s teacher academies, she says, “I would sit back and I would say, ‘Some of these teachers are not going to make it,’ because they were so nice and sweet.” But AUSL accepted her, along with two other faculty members from the old Harvard, and Barrett decided to give the organization a chance. She started to get “a good feeling,” in particular after meeting the new principal, Andre Cowling. “It was just certain things he would say that the other principals didn’t say,” she says.

Barrett’s instinct was right. “They came in and they just changed this school from bad to excellent,” she says. “I was shocked, because being here so long I didn’t think anyone could change it.” Between 2007 and 2009, while the average composite score on the ISAT in both the city and state crept up a few points, Harvard’s score nearly doubled, from 32 to 56 percent. Today, students at Harvard arrive in uniforms, walk quietly in the halls, and treat teachers with respect. “At the old Harvard, you would tell them they would suffer the consequences, but the children who wouldn’t listen knew they were going to get out of it,” says Barrett, who says their attitude was, “Well, go ahead, tell the teacher, go ahead tell the principal, what they gonna do?” “You don’t hear nobody here saying, ‘Well, go ahead, tell Mr. Cowling, what he gonna do?’ They don’t say that here.”

Of course, the sudden departure of almost all of Harvard’s adults took its toll. Barrett remembers that kids old enough to understand what was happening were upset at the loss of the teachers they’d known for years. The Chicago Teachers Union agrees. “We have concerns that when you break up relations between students and teachers, kids are affected by that,” says CTU spokeswoman Rosemaria Genova. “Look at Fenger.”

Fenger High School, which attracted national attention last September when junior Derion Albert was beaten to death in a gang fight, was just beginning its first year of in-house turnaround under CPS’s own Office of School Turnaround. In a column on the Fenger tragedy published in the Chicago Sun-Times last October, former CTU president Deborah Lynch wrote, “School turnarounds have turned out to be the deadliest reform of all. How could anyone expect that completely eliminating all the professionals and staff of a tough high-poverty high school could be a good thing?”

AUSL tries to reach out to parents as soon as a school is assigned to it, including bussing them to other turnaround schools so they can see how the model works. Barrett reports that parents have become much more involved in the past two years, in part due to AUSL’s continuing efforts to bring them in; recently Koldyke took a group of principals and parents to dinner at Maggiano’s with Mayor Daley. And many parents have become supportive, even contributing testimonials for the AUSL website. “Many of the most harsh critics of the district now are our greatest fans, and they’re our most vocal,” says Feinstein.

CPS under Ron Huberman appears set to continue sending a stream of turnaround schools to AUSL, and the organization couldn’t be happier. According to Koldyke, AUSL hopes to grow to more than fifty elementary schools over the next eight years, as well as a smaller number of high schools. Feinstein predicts that if AUSL’s expansion continues, it could become a sort of “district within a district.” Although the turnaround process itself should only last three to five years, he says that’s only the first stage of school improvement, and AUSL plans to keep managing its schools as long as CPS keeps renewing its five-year contracts. “Let the district worry about the 640 other schools,” he says. “I don’t think there’s a dearth of need.”

Correction: This article originally stated that “Unlike many Renaissance 2010 schools, AUSL’s turnaround schools aren’t charter schools, don’t receive CPS funding, and are staffed by unionized teachers.” In fact the schools do receive CPS funding via AUSL; however, they do not receive any funding through the Renaissance 2010 program.