(Jane Fentress)

The Chicago brew community has gone wild. We all know about Goose Island, but when the news broke on April 10 via Twitter that the California-based Lagunitas Brewing Company plans to open a new brewery in Douglas Park, it became clear that Chicago is in the middle of a craft beer renaissance. Within the next year, the home-brew “club” New Chicago Beer Company plans to open its “socially conscious” and “100% sustainable” (according to their website) permanent brewery, while Kickstarter-funded Pipeworks Brewing will be opening in the next few months. In a city with about a dozen brewery projects in the works, Lagunitas is entering a truly vibrant scene.

But Lagunitas, though it may be craft, is far from a microbrewery. The Douglas Park site will be housed in a former steel plant near the Cinespace Chicago Film Studios on 18th and Rockwell, and hopes to open in July 2013. The 250-barrel brewhouse will double Lagunitas’s national production, but the Chicago brewery alone is estimated to out-produce Goose Island, Pipeworks, Haymarket, Revolution, 5 Rabbit, Three Floyds, Two Brothers, and Half Acre combined, according to the popular beer blog Aleheads.

When asked how the opening of this new project might affect the Chicago beer scene, Lagunitas owner and Chicago native Tony Magee claimed, “There are a lot of brewers here now, and more in the crib, so I don’t really think that the addition of one brewer will affect the trajectory Chicago is already on. I just hope to be part of it all and to have fun doing it, too.” Aside from the brewhouse, Magee hopes to open the site up to the city by offering tours and tastings.

Local brewers have gone public with their well wishes for Lagunitas. The general consensus seems to be the more the merrier. As Paul Schneider wrote for Chitown on Tap, “The biggest effect is probably that this move is a major milestone in Chicago’s growth as a craft beer city. This is the third regional craft brewery in a few months to announce plans to open a second brewery… so the fact that it landed here is huge. It should give us some swagger.”

Most of the beer made in Douglas Park will be shipped farther east, while the local impact will mostly be a shake-up of resources and talent. When companies expand at the rate of Lagunitas, there are bound to be some shifts in labor, but the opening of this new site will ultimately lead to job creation and a rise in interest and talent among Chicagoans. Lagunitas is still a California brewery with a California identity, and adding its flavor to Chicago’s mix only means fresher beer for the Midwest.

How the opening of Lagunitas will affect its immediate neighborhood of Douglas Park may not be clear for some time. The brewery has high expectations: “The site is spectacular, and it will be cool to play even a small role in the reclamation of a part of the old North Lawndale area,” says Magee. North Lawndale is a West Side neighborhood, adjacent to Douglas Park, and was once Chicago’s largest Jewish community (it housed over 60 synagogues and approximately one quarter of the city’s Jewish population). Later it became the home base of Dr. Martin Luther King’s northern civil rights movement, while today it is a filming location in Showtime’s “Shameless.”

The area has seen recent revitalization in the form of real estate development, but there is a grassroots push for more community-oriented reclamation by residents. Lawndale community organizer Marcus Betts, who’s been running everything from political forums to wine and cheese tastings, is especially optimistic about the near future of the neighborhood. Still, it’s important to keep in mind that while the opening of Lagunitas’s new brewery may potentially provide jobs to local residents, it could also present the appearance of gentrification, rather than “reclamation,” to community members. It will be important, then, as Lagunitas moves forward to their opening in 2013, to consult local community organizers as well as their developers to create the right kind of development.

Lagunitas’s opening in Douglas Park will certainly mean a great deal of change for the both the community of North Lawndale and Chicago’s craft beer community at large. The project is an ambitious one amidst a crowd of ambitious projects. Today it’s hard to believe that the prohibition movement actually started in this city.

John Gamino

“We believe in the vendor, we believe in the little guy,” declared Beth Kregor in her opening remarks of Saturday’s food truck symposium. Kregor, who is the director of the UofC Law School’s Institute for Justice Clinic of Entrepreneurship, addressed an eclectic group of university students, locals, and members of the food truck industry gathered in the school’s parking lot.

The day began with a series of panels on the legal status and future of mobile food in Chicago, organized by the IJ Clinic. The little guy, Kregor and the other panelists stressed, often comes from a family of recent immigrants, and may not even speak English. “Most of them are not foodies at all,” said Sean Basinski, a lawyer and street vendor advocate, discrediting the idea that truck owners tend to be already-successful restaurateurs. “It is at best a hard-earned path to middle income,” added Gabriel Wiesen, who started the food truck Beaver’s Coffee & Donuts when he failed to secure funding for a restaurant in Rogers Park.

The need to protect vendors’ legal rights and interests, particularly in cases of language barriers, was emphasized throughout the symposium. Many of the panelists argued that current city laws against mobile food are unnecessarily protectionist in favor of the brick-and-mortar establishment, and even unconstitutional.

Chicago’s regulations are indeed some of the most restrictive among large cities in the country—mobile food vendors are virtually prohibited from selling on public property downtown and cannot prepare food on site. The IJ Clinic cited research showing that food trucks actually help the very restaurants that try to restrict them, increasing foot traffic while serving a faster, less filling meal. To some of the panelists, though, competition wasn’t even a concern. Bert Gall, senior attorney at the IJ, underscored the need to eliminate arbitrary regulations even if the “little guy” happened to be the owner of a comparable brick-and-mortar business.

After the symposium, the trucks serving lunch outside certainly didn’t seem to represent the littlest guys in Chicago. As customers lined up in droves to get their fill, they were encouraged to follow the trucks on Facebook and Twitter. One vendor even described his motivation for work as a “passion for branding.” But despite the abundant commercialization, the opacity of municipal regulations was still a conspicuous force—one truck, still mired in the process of obtaining a dispensary license, could only legally offer samples from outside the lot.

Of course, the focus on Saturday remained primarily on the food itself. “At what point do I become gluttonous?” asked a panel attendee over free samples of Beaver’s donuts. It was a question that was surely on many peoples’ minds.

Sasha Tycko

“Stop the shooting!” Fists shoot into the air as the crowd roars its response. Stop the shooting. “Stop the killing!” Stop the killing. Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr. is speaking at the national headquarters for his Rainbow/PUSH coalition, blocks from President Obama’s Hyde Park home.

He is orating as part of the weekly Saturday Morning Forum, billed as a “unique blend of political rally, entertainment, information sharing, and church service.” On this particular Saturday, Jackson is joined by members of Occupy Chicago for a panel on issues of social and economic justice. This event is also the last stop of the PUSH for Excellence HBCU tour, and dozens of high school students in bright yellow t-shirts arrive in a charter bus.

The program begins with organ music and dancing, and the crowd’s energy transitions seamlessly into political fervor. First up is the call to build a new airport in the south suburbs, a plan pushed in Congress by Jackson’s son. Jackson proposes an “occupation” of the airport site, and claims that a new airport would reduce traffic at Midway and O’Hare. He emphasizes that the airport would create 17,000 new jobs.

“Say ‘jobs’!” Jobs. “Say ‘jobs’ again!” Jobs!

The crowd erupts when Jackson brings to the stage the family of Howard Morgan, the former Chicago cop who was shot 28 times by white officers, survived, and was then sentenced to 40 years in prison. Tavis Grant, National Field Director of the Rainbow/PUSH coalition, says Morgan is “still innocent,” and unveils a plan to start a legal defense fund for the Morgan family. “We’re not going to be quiet and let our people get shot down in the streets,” says Grant. With Easter in mind, Jackson declares, “You don’t have to be guilty to be crucified.”

“Too much killing!” Too much killing! “Stop the killing!” Stop the killing!

The discussion turns to more specific issues when the panel begins. Andy Manos of Occupy Chicago’s Labor Committee criticizes mounting student loan debts and tuition hikes—as an adjunct professor at DePaul University, Manos totaled the amount of student debt in just one of his classes at $650,000.

Jackson condemns Chicago public schools, mapping the trajectory for a suspended student from suspension, to expulsion, to jail, to the graveyard.

Ken Richardson of Occupy for Prisoners joins in, discussing the injustice of mass incarceration. “We want to stop the system that incarcerates people in the first place,” says Richardson, calling the status quo, “the new Jim Crow.”  Stripped of voting rights, he maintains, prisoners become “second-class citizens.” Jackson claims that while most users and sellers of drugs are white, the people sitting in jail are black.

The program concludes with singing and prayer. The groups split ways, and Occupy heads downtown for the Chicago Spring. The ever-active Jackson collects donations, asking people to “move quickly” so that he can make it to the funeral of the late Rev. Addie Wyatt.

National Library of Scotland/flickr

According to Dr. Mikhail Korenman’s favorite origin theory, chess was first played in sixth century India by kings and emperors as an alternative to war.

“The whole game of chess was established as a game of peace,” Korenman says, explaining how the movement of knights and pawns stands in for the movement of soldiers and armies. “Before the game they would shake hands, and after the game they would shake hands. It’s peace.”

The question remains as to whether the game can bring peace to the battles of modern life. Last Monday Korenman and Sheriff Tom Dart announced a new chess program at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, the first of its kind in the United States. In the coming months, 150 inmates from the lowest security division of the jail will learn strategy and compete in tournaments.

The program is modeled after similar endeavors in Brazil and Russia affiliated with Anatoly Karpov, the Russian chess grandmaster and former world champion. Korenman and Karpov are old associates—Korenman started the Anatoly Karpov International School of Chess in Lindsborg, Kansas, bringing Russian discipline to a Swedish prairie town. The chess enthusiast approached Sheriff Dart earlier this year with his penal proposal, saying, “If we can have this in São Paulo, why can’t we have this in Chicago?”

Karpov was present alongside Korenman and Dart at the program’s unveiling, lending the send-off a certain gravity and importance. Korenman compares the excitement to a visit from Michael Jordan for a group of amateur basketball players.

Korenman himself—gruff, blue-eyed, with a perpetual grimace—has been interested in chess since his childhood in Voronezh, Russia. He holds a Master’s degree in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Education, and worked as a science teacher until 2008, when he quit his day job to become a self-employed chess enthusiast, philanthropist, and tutor.

Cook County Jail is not the first place Korenman has employed chess as a rehabilitative agent. In 2006 he left a faculty position at Bethany College in Kansas to follow his wife’s career to Chicago. He began teaching at CCA Academy, a school for students taking their second chance at a high school diploma.

The switch wasn’t the easiest for Korenman. “I asked my teaching partner what it would take to adjust, to survive,” he recalls. “He said I needed to get trust from the students.”

Korenman spent a couple months brainstorming, and one day he brought a chess set in for his students. “We started playing, and a few days later a pretty significant group of the male population of the school was staying behind and seeing what it is and how to play,” he says. “The principal asked to purchase ten chess sets, and we decided to do a tournament.” It was a success, and Korenman promised to bring the six winners of that tournament to the national tournament in Kansas City.

At the tournament, his students placed lower than Korenman expected. But he was surprised to see the contrast between his own disappointment and the exaltation of his students. “When we came home to the school, it was like the Rose Parade,” he recalls. “I didn’t realize how big it was for those students to be a winner. That was the main thing: they won something.” The next year chess was incorporated into the school’s curriculum, and the program is still growing.

Korenman dreams of repurposing one of the city’s many abandoned storefronts downtown into a community chess center, where people can play and socialize. It’s a simple operation—not much would be required beyond tables, chairs, and boards—that Korenman hopes could make a real impact, perhaps even as a means of employment and real-world integration for newly released prisoners.

“There are some inmates who get out of jail and are looking for something to do. They could be used for these programs,” he says. “It could help them be good citizens.”

The military origins of chess lend it a certain violence, but it’s a contained violence. Chess can be a way to abstract away aggression, providing a safe arena for conflict resolution as well as the development of patience and decision-making skills. The jail is still a somewhat experimental ground, of course: success would mean expansion, but it risks dissolving into a frivolous use of resources.

Hopefully, though, Korenman’s students walk away with at least this one message from their tutor: “I don’t want to kill on the street. I want to solve all of my problems on this little chess board.”

Rachel Wiseman & lindsaybanks/flickr

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The dusty green and yellow “Ramova” marquee straddles a now unused entrance at the corner of 35th and South Halsted. Inside the Ramova Theater, founded in 1929, the Spanish-style auditorium gives way to what was once a midnight blue ceiling, studded with stars that glittered as Charlie Chaplin graced the silver screen. When the marquee was less dusty, childhood classics like Bambi and famous American blockbusters like Jaws played under that night sky until the Ramova closed in 1986. In 2001, the city took over the building—seemingly the final nail in a coffin containing a piece of Bridgeport’s history.

But Bridgeport resident Maureen Sullivan is striving to regain control. Born and raised in Bridgeport, the friendly yet fiercely committed Sullivan remembers her weekly trips to the Ramova Theater to watch the latest releases. Like countless other Bridgeport and Chicago residents, the Ramova is central to Sullivan’s childhood recollections, a treasured memory that has stayed with her since her youth.

“Almost everyone who has lived in the neighborhood during the last few decades has been inside the Ramova,” said Sullivan. “The theater was a focal part of this extremely vibrant life in Bridgeport that no one ever forgot, even after it was shut down.”

The vibrancy Sullivan speaks of harkens back to the 1970s, when Mexican, Chinese, and Lithuanian-Americans transformed Bridgeport into a multi-ethnic community, a place that for many constituted the quintessential Chicago neighborhood. Nowadays, the area has been a political and cultural hotbed, enticing more and more young college grads looking for affordable, safe housing.

Yet despite the influx of new residents, the stretch along South Halsted near the Ramova is somewhat bleak. Starting as far back as seven years ago, the city government began tearing down buildings near the Ramova, erasing much of the block’s former grandeur.  Though new construction projects—like the block-long condo development on 35th street—replaced the old buildings, empty lots still dot the area, and city officials remain unsure about the future of any further development.

Alarmed by the city’s intervention, Sullivan was determined to prevent the Ramova’s demolition in order to protect Bridgeport’s cultural history. In 2005, Sullivan started a petition to fight for the theater’s survival, aiming to safeguard a building that holds so much cultural value for the city and sentimental value for many Bridgeport residents.

What began as a petition grew into a full-blown initiative to not only restore the Ramova but to turn it into a hub of Bridgeport culture. With approximately 4,000 signatures on the petition by both neighborhood residents and backers outside of Bridgeport, Sullivan had gathered enough support for her case to fight for the Ramova’s restoration and reopening.

“The trick was to just keep beating the drum,” Sullivan explains. “We kept pushing the possibility of saving the Ramova out in the open and more people started to remember their days at the theater and how crucial the Ramova was to the arts scene in Bridgeport.”

Sullivan stresses that the nostalgic pull of the space is central to the restoration effort: “The Ramova was the center of entertainment and a lot of childhood memories for people in Bridgeport, and residents bring that up all the time because those memories really matter to them. It was actually a key issue at the alderman debate last year, which goes to show how many people are willing to fight for the Ramova.”

Despite widespread public support for the Ramova’s restoration, obstacles began to appear and push back the project. The economic downturn in 2008 prevented Sullivan from obtaining the necessary resources for a restoration initiative—leaving the project in the planning stages, where dreams can grow and shrink, but nothing physical moves. Furthermore, the city expressed its wish for a private party or non-profit organization to direct the restoration, meaning that city officials and funds would have minimal involvement with the project.

In light of these difficulties, Sullivan redirected her efforts into creating a cohesive support base. This base is the Friends of South Halsted, a non-profit focused on the cultural and commercial renewal of not only the theater but the whole nearby stretch of South Halsted.

While the theater itself holds most of the personal significance that drew in the initial support from the Bridgeport community, outsiders slowly began to recognize the theater’s potential as a focal point for the neighborhood’s wider redevelopment. The power of this vision spurred the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) to get involved in 2010.

Robert Chaney, an undergraduate student at IIT, identified the Ramova as a fitting project for the institution’s Interprofessional Projects Program (IPRO). The Ramova’s restoration offered an excellent opportunity for business, architecture, and arts-oriented IPRO students to receive hands-on experience in their fields by contributing to Bridgeport’s cultural development. After approval from the program coordinators, Chaney and Sullivan teamed up. Students began creating floor plans and working to attract local businesses while Sullivan promoted the cause through “Save the Ramova” fundraisers.

Sullivan’s efforts finally motivated city administrators to contact restoration and theater operations specialist Ray Shepardson, best known for his refurbishment of the Loop’s glittering Chicago Theater.

“When I select which theaters to preserve, part of my criteria involves the theater’s historical importance to their surroundings and the local community’s initiative in getting it back on its feet,” Shepardson explained. “In the Ramova’s case, Maureen’s [built up] that energy already, so my job is to draw up plans that detail what changes to the theater itself will take place, and how it will become economically viable enough to help the community grow.”

Sullivan, Shepardson, and the students aim to develop a creative environment that captures Bridgeport’s past and returning vibrancy, with the Ramova as a symbol connecting the old with the new.

While the run-down theater undergoes renovations, they hope to likewise create an energetic commercial environment along South Halsted by persuading local business owners to set up shop near the Ramova. There’s a big hole to fill—The Ramova Grill, the 82-year-old chili parlor in one of the storefronts attached to the theater, recently announced it is closing on the 14th.

Between the renovation’s economic and cultural aspirations, the end goal is to persuade Chicagoans inside and outside Bridgeport to explore the neighborhood.

“While Bridgeport is still a tight-knit neighborhood, it’s not as close as it used to be when I was growing up because people are going out of the neighborhood for entertainment and shopping,” said Sullivan. “Part of our objective is to keep people in Bridgeport and show them that there is fun to be had in the neighborhood.”

She continued, “It’s very hard to build a neighborhood’s sense of community if the residents are constantly leaving for opportunities outside. So we’re trying to use home-grown economics to revive Bridgeport’s past history as a commercial, entertainment, and artistic hotbed.”

While the Ramova of years past was focused on the silver screen, the Ramova of the future will be a multi-purpose arts venue. The new theater will have its lobby transformed into an art gallery while the auditorium will be a music venue.

The team is ever closer to officially beginning the restoration project. Shepardson and a new cohort of IPRO students continue to draw up building plans, estimate the final costs, and sell the area’s commercial potential to local business-owners. Although prospects have taken a positive turn, Sullivan still organizes Save the Ramova fundraisers to gather even more public support. Her efforts are bearing fruit, as the Ramova’s restoration was one of the top three discussion priorities at a Cultural Plan for Chicago meeting this past week.

While official funding is still hard to come by and the restoration is still under preliminary planning, the team has high hopes that the Ramova marquee will soon glimmer.

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.”

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.”

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.”