The audience ranged from zany to utterly nondescript. A woman wearing a short leather jacket and stockings patterned with silhouetted houses sat in front of me, while another wearing a beige trench coat and an unassuming dress sat next to me. The room’s thick white walls were blank with the exception of a single panel, where “Fresh Flesh” was spray-painted in a galactic mix of purples, greens, and copper-speckled white. Ed Marszewski, one of the directors of the Co-Prosperity sphere, donned his thick-framed glasses before launching into the plans for the night.

“This is going to be an informal gathering” he explained. “We are going to come up with actionable plans, we’re going to have constructive and generative thought about the cultural plan of Chicago. So, to do that,  you’ll come up and speak for 5  minutes…”

This year, the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) is working on the “2012 Chicago Cultural Plan,” which proposes to first figure out Chicago’s cultural identity and then shape it moving forward. This plan aims to provoke conversation between local artists, community members and anybody aspiring to add to the discussion of Chicago’s cultural identity. In these conversations, participants are invited to put forward ideas and proposals to further the impact of the Chicago arts community. Its aim is to establish an encompassing plan to ameliorate the problems artists face in Chicago through the collaborative partnerships formed in the private and public sectors.

The night began with Marszewski pointing at people to start the conversation. His finger first fell on a stylish advertising agent dressed in red lipstick and high-piled  hair. She stepped forward and spoke about consulting services for artists wanting to spread their image. Marsewski continued to direct the relaxed procession around the room until he abruptly left unexplained—possibly for a bathroom break? However, the floor had already been cleared for passionate debate about reforming the cultural identity of Chicago, and the intensity of the conversation compelled volunteers to step up.

Some of the brainstorming included a proposal for cultural ambassadors, who would be the link between the neighborhoods and the city. These ambassadors would be artists deeply embedded in their neighborhood who could identify problems artists faced and understand the interests and needs of the neighborhood; people who could represent them forcefully, accurately, and passionately about the decline of art production. Many speakers mentioned different systems and programs in other states and in other countries that worked efficiently and effectively to spur artistic creation by providing struggling artists with resources like living and showcase spaces, and materials for creation.

One of the most striking suggestions of the evening, perhaps because it was the only Powerpoint presentation, was the establishment of a space to be called the New Museum. This venue would address the problem that independent artists face today of securing legal spaces to showcase their artwork. Currently, they hold “illegal” private apartment parties out of necessity, always faced with the pressure from the police to shut them down. The New Museum would centralize independent artists in a legal space and integrate artists scattered across the city to increase visibility for emerging artists.

Marszewski, halfway through the presentation, came to a poignant realization: “You know, I’ve been thinking. Let’s face it—the city isn’t going to meet all of our demands. What we need to do is [take this] into our own hands. We need to connect with artists and change Chicago together.”

These community meetings aren’t just a way to communicate to the City of Chicago artists’ needs; they enable networks to form that enrich conversation between artists and about art in Chicago. Theirs is a diverse union, held together by the passion to create, to explore and to challenge; and for future Chicago cultural growth, it is vital to use that common artistic spirit as a means of reinforcing the weakening bonds of art within the city.

(Ethan Tate)

Off the Brown Line, past a Starbucks and a lighting store, near the Moody Bible Institute, around the corner from a restaurant that used to be cool, down the street from Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School, surrounded by churches on one side, expensive realty on the other, you’ll find the most dangerous place in Chicago. Or what used to be, at least.

In 2000, there were 1,424 arrests in this tiny six by two-block area. Now the gangs and the drug dealers and all the impoverished families that used to scare residents of the Gold Coast are gone. There’s just empty fields, cracked pavement, some dust: the last remaining remnants of the high rise-towers of Cabrini-Green.

Cabrini is the most striking example of a pattern that can be seen across Chicago. Projects that used to inspire fear and disgust are coming down and nothing is replacing them. When the Plan for Transformation began in 1999, there were approximately 38,000 units of public housing in Chicago. Now, there are fewer than 22,000.

On the South Side, the State Street Corridor, once home to 7,938 units, and the Wells Group, an expansive complex that used to contain 3,239 units, are now mostly empty fields or half-finished mixed-income properties. Combined, there are fewer than 1,500 units at both sites. The goal is to rebuild or renovate 25,000 units before the Plan ends. But it’s an open secret that the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) has been boosting its numbers, tallying units that were excluded from the original count and letting over 3,500 units sit vacant.

Meanwhile, the demand for affordable housing remains enormous. During the 2010-2011 school year, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless reported that 93,780 Chicagoans were at some point without homes. And when the CHA’s Family Property Waitlist opened for 26 days in the summer of 2010, 203,000 families applied for 40,000 spots. It was the first time the waitlist had been opened in over ten years.

Why aren’t there more units to meet this overwhelming demand? Part of the reason is that neighborhoods across Chicago are afraid. They don’t want the next Cabrini or Robert Taylor or Stateway Gardens in their community. And who can blame them? The high-rises were dangerous.

But, it’s a mistake to simply equate the residents of public housing with the physical spaces they lived in. Throughout Chicago, extreme poverty and total institutional neglect plagued the projects. In 1995, CHA developments made up 11 of the 15 poorest census tracts in the country.  The CHA was so mismanaged during this period that the federal government took away local control and put the Authority into federal receivership. Still, detailing structural problems has done little to assuage the fear of many Chicagoans.

****

In April, the Urban Institute released a report that established a tenuous, but nonetheless significant link between relocated public housing residents and crime. But, if you really want to know about public housing’s relationship to crime, you should ask someone who’s lived in a development. They’ll tell you a more complex story than this new report and a more nuanced one than I ever could.

Ms. Deborah Taylor, a longtime tenant activist who grew up in the now demolished Ida B. Wells project, explains, “It ain’t easy to make it through the projects… it always seems like it has a negative connotation, but it actually shouldn’t. It’s about survival. It’s tough. We don’t fall down easy, we aren’t soft, we’re very resilient and very educated…I think we’re demonized.”

The Urban Institute’s report is important to examine because of just how limited its conclusions are. The study examined crime rates in Atlanta and Chicago over an eight-year period, attempting to determine whether residents who relocated from demolished public housing projects to subsidized private market units contributed to any increase in crime in their new neighborhoods. In Chicago, the  CHA issued more 16,000 vouchers to families moving away from projects slated for destruction.

“Overall,” researchers summarized, “our findings show that a substantial majority of neighborhoods in both cities were able to absorb public housing relocation voucher households without any adverse effect on neighborhood conditions.”

Perhaps the least surprising finding of the study was that neighborhoods that used to be home to high-rise projects experienced the most dramatic drops in crime. The report found that areas where the projects stood saw violent crime decrease by 60 percent and gun crime fall off 70 percent. When empty lots replace poorly managed and poorly constructed towers, it turns out that places get safer.

The neighborhoods where residents moved couldn’t boast similarly high drops in crime. Many of the neighborhoods with a high density of relocated residents (more than 14 per 1,000 residents) did experience higher than expected crime rates. But even these areas experienced an overall decrease in crime from the beginning to the end of the study period. This finding coincided with another that confirmed what many feared at the beginning of the relocation process—residents were moving from poor, black public housing projects to poor, black neighborhoods.

But this shouldn’t come as a shock. Faced with the destruction of their homes and the breaking-up of their communities, residents moved to neighborhoods where their friends and relatives in similar circumstances lived. Taken as a whole, then, the Urban Institute’s findings are relatively innocuous.

****

When the report was released, the response was so swift, you’d think every Chicagoan was in immanent danger. The Sun-Times published a piece that began: “crime was worse in neighborhoods where former Chicago Housing Authority Residents used vouchers to move into private apartments,” a finding that the Report explicitly rejects. The Atlantic linked the report to a story published in the magazine in 2008 called “American Murder Mystery” that implicated relocated public housing residents for rising crime rates in Memphis. This connection was highlighted in spite of the fact that the Urban Institute’s findings’ contrast with the claim of that article. And, on websites like EveryBlock, residents of ‘destination neighborhoods,’ where former public housing residents have moved en masse, expressed their outrage at the CHA and city government and their fear of their new neighbors, even as others tried to look at the issue in a more expansive way.

Political figures reacted too. 4th Ward Alderman Will Burns issued a statement, downplaying crime problems in his ward and emphasizing the success of mixed-income developments. Charles Woodyard, the Chicago Housing Authority’s CEO, defended the Plan for Transformation and pointed out a number of shortcomings of the study. For example, the Report only detailed crime statistics from 2000-2008, so any conclusions about the present would be mere extrapolations. Woodyard also made another point that went unrecognized in the rush of articles to appear after the release of the Report: the researchers never specify whether CHA relocatees were the victims or perpetrators of crimes.

What were relocated residents saying? Looking at the media accounts, it’s hard to know. For just about everyone who’s looking, residents are harder to find than they used to be. In 2009, the Authority took out ads in local papers to find unaccounted for tenants, but, for the most part, the search came to nothing. In 2010, the CHA reported that they couldn’t find 2,202 former residents of their demolished projects that they were supposed to be tracking. Residents who were supposed to be relocated with the utmost attention to their well being had disappeared.

For public housing residents, stigma and silence are nothing new. Ms. Taylor once told me, “the public does have a certain perception of people…It’s one they’ve promoted and developed themselves. This is how they want you to see the people in subsidized housing because they don’t want to keep paying for it.”

The towers that stayed up in spite of so many problems have come down. Public housing communities that stood strong in the face of mismanagement and violence and drugs are demolished. But, even without the projects, one thing hasn’t changed: public housing residents are still feared.

The expression “we are the 99%” is perhaps the Occupy movement’s most polarizing asset. Journalist Zeeshan Aleem, representing Occupy Chicago, praised the movement’s diversity, noting the inherent difficulty in having a single panelist speaking for so large a group. He shared his vision for the movement as a form of agitation from outside the current political arena that could ultimately push the system toward change. Aleem pointed out that in the wake of Occupy, corporations have begun to change their PR rhetoric, choosing words like “freedom” over “capitalism.”

Representing the UofC Democrats, Sam Baron had different ends in mind. “I’m not sure how much Occupy has done besides change the political discourse,” he said.  For Baron, a self-described member of the 99%, but only a “highly sympathetic outsider” to the movement, the Democratic Party was still the best means of enacting change in favor of the American left. “I’m asking for a movement that is radically less sexy than what’s taking place,” he acknowledged.

In true Occupy fashion, the roughly 30 attendants played a major role in directing the debate. More than once the panelists abruptly stopped talking when someone from the crowd made a face, and the audience’s “questions” were usually prefaced with lengthy, heated remarks and historical clarifications. Beyond being mere points of debate, however, the questions repeatedly hit upon matters of definition.

“Is Occupy ‘the left’?” asked one woman, confused by the various uses of the term that had been thrown around. Later, another audience member, responding to Baron’s criticism that Occupy lacked a clear purpose, asked with a knowing grin: “What’s the Democratic party’s purpose? Hope? Change?”

In his closing remarks, Aleem tried to bring the discussion back to its original purpose, suggesting that Occupy “might be something other than the left.” But the war over words could not be put away that easily. After the debate, a member of Students for a Free Society stood by the doorway handing out fliers. “Are you interested in liberty?” he asked.

[Show as slideshow]

Everyone was well fed—Diane Adams made sure of it. The 56-year-old ran back and forth across the Woodlawn Mental Health Center so fast her red and orange outfit blurred into a comet. Though the lobby was filled with groups of people eating food and talking, reporters asking questions, and the sound of camera flashes, her question “Have you eaten yet?” was impossible to miss.

Adams’s biography explains her fervor—she is a member of the Mental Health Movement and Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP), and she is a patient at the Auburn-Gresham Mental Health Center. As with her own facility, the Woodlawn clinic is scheduled to close on April 30. Though she was there to fight, the day was also a celebration of the clinic’s work—the free food made the live music that much more enjoyable.

This month the city began the process of consolidating their twelve outpatient clinics into six. They hope private mental health organizations will make up for the facilities that are being cut. However, since the transition began, the experience has been “chaos” for patients, Adams claims. According to the Mental Health Movement, patients have had difficulty making appointments—they don’t know where to go, and are unfamiliar with their new facilities. Furthermore, Spanish-speaking patients have faced cancelled appointments because of a dearth of Spanish-speaking doctors. While an eventual transition is possible, the movement believes the cost of the transition period may be too high.

The celebration was organized by a coalition of the Mental Health Movement, STOP, and Occupy Chicago. After commemorating the clinic, they planned to barricade themselves inside the building—a sign to the city that the clinic isn’t just an asset for the community, but a necessity.

Taking over the building wasn’t supposed to be easy, and they had a plan in place. Around 4:30 they would gather outside with a microphone and make their case to the city. Then the group would go inside—the doors would be chained shut, and cement would be mixed and poured to block the back and side entrances. The protestors had enough food for a month, and volunteers had signed up to stand outside as an added layer of defense.  Before the doors were shut, they even planned to take out the trash. Only force, or a change in the policy, would get them out. The plan began on schedule with a microphone and speakers outside the clinic.

When you hear someone involved with mental health as a patient or provider speak about the effects the closures are having, the issue has only one side. By the very nature of mental health, it can’t be put on hold. In extreme cases, an individual’s world is turned upside down. Standing in front of the main entrance, a few moments before the doors were shut, N’Donna Carter gave her testimony.

“We brought people together to tell stories and laugh,” she began. “People are safe when they’re at the clinic, but the city has skirted their duty.” She continued by relaying the sobering fact that “Chicago has had three suicides since the budget was passed. The day it passed, someone jumped off a Blue Line train.”

Adams spoke directly to Mayor Emanuel and his administration: “They think mental health patients are crazy people—well, WE’RE NOT! Mr. Mayor, you better enjoy your last term.”

Before beginning the sit-in, everyone inside the building was given a chance to get out. A few reporters and cameraman scuttled out after the final warning. One man rushed in yelling, “I have to get my mom out first!” Using a microphone on the inside connected to a speaker on the outside, a demonstrator warned the crowd, “If the police come, you will have to make a human wall to give us time.”

It’s good it didn’t come to that—the demonstrators needed about ten extra minutes to convince two people outside the building to surrender their bike locks to help secure the doors.  When the first police car arrived, they didn’t even slow down to examine the scene. As the microphone blared, “THE POLICE ARE HERE,” the statement was no longer true. They were gone.

A few minutes later another squad car appeared, but the officers stayed in the vehicle a block away. One of them was working on a drink from Starbucks, and they didn’t seem to be in a hurry. Eventually, the officers sauntered over to the clinic. They smiled at the demonstrators who made room for them to approach the now-locked front doors.

Gently, one of the officers tugged it the full centimeter it was capable of opening. She then looked at her partner and walked away. On the sidewalk, a man approached the officer and asked what was going on. She explained how the city was beginning to close the clinics, and how these people wanted to keep them open. Her voice was full of sympathy—an understandable reaction from an employee of another underfunded branch of the city government.

Eventually more police arrived. What else could have happened? Squad cars blocked off the road, and a higher-ranking officer began a dialogue with the protestors. At the end of a meeting between three officers and three protestors across the street from the clinic, one of the officers reassured the protestors, “We understand your cause.”

The two groups went their separate ways. Standing around in the street, one of the officers made a big grin every time a camera was pointed in his direction. He asked one photographer to make sure he was shooting in “high definition.” A group of four men in fluorescent green hats that read “National Lawyers Guild: Legal Observer” looked bored. Having arrived to “protect people’s constitutional rights,” they found little to do.

* * * *

At 12:30am the police used chainsaws and bolt cutters to enter the clinic. Twenty-three demonstrators were arrested, 11 of whom were released without charges. Carter was one of those arrested. A day after being released, her own alleged mistreatment by the police illustrates why the clinics are so desperately needed.

“I was denied my medication for three hours,” Carter claimed. Even though her name was on the prescription bottle, the police told her they were not allowed to medicate anyone who was being held. Finally, three hours late, she was allowed to take her medication.

“I was patted down by a man, even though I asked for a woman,” she continued. Her voice vibrated with anger as she related what happened while she was in custody, claiming, “They touched my private areas.”

Carter’s story—if true—illustrates an important point made by mental health advocates: with fewer resources available, some of the more severely ill mental health patients will inevitably end up behind bars. Police are not sufficiently trained in caring for or understanding mental health issues and are not legally allowed to offer the assistance these patients require. In light of this, the need for a public mental health plan that makes up for the gaps in the proposed system seems especially acute.

Ronald Jackson was also arrested that night. A former marine who has lost some mobility in his legs, Jackson’s experience reveals one of the infinite ways a non-violent inmate in need of special medical care could prove problematic for police officers.

He smiles when he tells the story, but it’s a horrible account exposing the inadequate services the CPD are prepared to offer. “When I have to go to the bathroom, I have a few minutes time before it becomes an emergency,” he laughs. “So I tried to get in there, but my hands were locked together. I struggled to get my pants down,” he continued. “When I was done, I was holding my pants up with one hand, but I couldn’t zip up. The officer would unlock me, but then I would have had to drop my pants. I told him, I wasn’t wearing any drawers. We just stood staring at each other for a long while.” If Jackson had been suffering from severe mental health issues, one wonders how much worse the situation might have become.

At a press conference across the street from the clinic on Saturday, Jackson had sharp words for the mayor. “Somewhere in between the idea that you are a king and a lord of lords, you were voted to keep the trust of the community,” he bellowed.

According to Carter, Alderman George Cardenas had told the Mental Health Movement that he couldn’t stand up to the mayor because he didn’t want to “bite the hand that feeds.” After sharing this anecdote, Carter roared, “I’LL BE DAMNED. I’M THE HAND THAT FEEDS. IT’S OUR MONEY.”

Hopefully Carter’s message, the last thing she said to reporters, won’t be overshadowed by her alleged mistreatment. On Thursday, some members of the crowd seemed excited by the prospect of blocking the police—they wanted conflict. But Carter’s mistreatment isn’t an example of the mayor exercising malice. It is the expression of a police force that is underfunded and undertrained. While jails aren’t perfect—it’s a sad truth but hardly a secret—the police still have a role to play. When the clinics close, their jobs will only get harder.

“If I had resisted the police, or said something, I could be dead,” Jackson said. If the police are asked to handle the outflow of those in extreme need of mental health care, there are bound to be mistakes. Chicago’s South and West Sides were once described as an “emergency in slow motion” by former University of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson. While no single, great issue exists, the list of minor tragedies—shootings, lost jobs, failed tests—can overwhelm a community. The clinic closures won’t drastically alter the South Side, but we know less mental health care will only deepen the emergency.

For this state to end, the clinics don’t only need to reopen, they need more funding. If the private clinics can expand upon what was previously offered, that may be a silver lining. But will the transition cost any more lives? Either way, if the movement redirects its energy against the police, hope may be lost.

Adams had a solution in mind, one that would help the police and the clinics—“Tax those yachts!” While her suggestion may at first seem to have more charm than reason, it’s certainly not a bad idea. The city only needs $3 million to keep the clinics open—there are yachts worth quite a bit more tied up in the lake.

Lauren Hunter Thomas contributed to the reporting of this piece. Contact (773) 340-9598 to assist the Mental Health Movement.

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.

Claire Hungerford

Political movements can be hard to maintain—especially when they intend to publically bear the force of weather, police, and internal debate for as long as it takes to bring about change. In the earliest days of Occupy Chicago (OC) way back in September, thousands of people showed up at the city’s financial district in the Loop to protest a political system that is “carrying out the agenda of the 1 percent.”

When the demonstrators could no longer fit on the sidewalks of Jackson and LaSalle—perched either outside the Bank of America, or kitty-corner, in the plaza outside the Chicago Board of Trade—they moved to Congress Plaza Gardens just outside of Grant Park, where wide, shallow steps and plenty of open space made it easier to see and hear all of the group’s members. For even larger demonstrations, they’d move into Grant Park itself. The group set up overnight encampments, held general assemblies, endured at least 300 arrests, and began to take shape as a bona fide movement.

Today, a good day at a general assembly (GA) brings in about 25 people, many of whom are “been-here-since Day-1” members. But it would be unfair to presume that the movement is floundering—the last two months have been some of its most productive, as the group has organized around the NATO summit, occupied Brian Piccolo Elementary School along with parents and students, and prepared for what they’re calling the Chicago Spring: weeks of demonstrations with other city-wide organizations to inspire the social conscience of Chicago.

While the group’s first plans were voted on outside, these days the conversations have taken place indoors. Since the end of January, OC has conducted its business from its headquarters at 500 W. Cermak. The Riverfront Work Lofts house artist studios, offices, and now two “working units” for the movement’s storage and meetings. But as the days grow warmer, OC has begun its movement back outdoors, and is working to figure out what that would mean for the indoor space they fought hard to obtain.

In the early OC days, crowds flooded the streets night and day, armed with signs, megaphones, and sleeping bags. But the movement struggled to keep account of its own goals and proceedings. Ryan Metz, a research technologist and member of OC’s Secretariat Committee, the group that helps set the agenda for each GA, said, “I became a walking filing cabinet. I had all of our files and archives in my backpack, and had to be out there every day. All I wanted back then was a filing cabinet. It was unsustainable.”

(Claire Hungerford)

The movement reorganized in order to get most of its day-to-day activities running like well-oiled machines, following relatively strict procedures voted on during general assemblies. In fact, a proposal entitled “Well Oiled Machine” passed early on to smooth out procedures for announcements, proposals, speakers’ lists, and voting at the GA meetings held four times a week. Two-dozen functional committees were formed to handle issues of housing, the press, social media, arts and recreation, education, and so on.

But as the weather facing outdoor demonstrators and overnight campers became colder and snowier, the crowds began to thin. People worried that the movement would be incapable of persisting through a Chicago winter.  “Everyone understood intuitively that we needed an indoor space,” said Metz. “People really believed that when we got the space, everyone would come out again, everyone would come back.”

Despite a consensus on the necessity of an indoor encampment, securing a specific space was far from easy. A Housing Committee was created to research real estate options and devise a list of four prime locations to be voted on during GA. Metz, who also happened to cast the final vote, said, “It was the single most contentious issue in our occupation’s history.”

Daily committee meetings and dozens of threads on the movement’s website debated the relative merit of locations around the city. The four options that were eventually brought to the table included Printer’s Row, the South Loop, a “no place at all” option, and a Cermak Road space in Pilsen. Placement was such a heated issue that the group temporarily switched to approval voting just to decide the location, with the option garnering the greatest number of votes deemed the new winter headquarters.

Though an anonymous benefactor, nicknamed Benefactor X, offered to put up half the rent, the group proceeded conservatively. Many preferred Pilsen because it was the cheapest option that included a roof. “We only had so much money from our benefactor, and the other options for their sizes just weren’t affordable,” said Metz.

Footage of the housing issue’s final December vote has been placed on YouTube—in the end, OC voted for the Pilsen option. At the end of the video, OC member Danielle Villarreal faces the camera and comments on the movement’s decision to move to Pilsen: “I am extremely excited this was approved tonight, finally, and that we will be moving into this location, in a blighted area that needs a lot of help, which is suffering from injustices across the board.”

After the votes were counted and the Pilsen space was officially chosen, the crowd began to bounce up and down, shouting, “WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE, ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE!”

* * *

“The way I originally conceived of it is by saying to people, ‘Look, this is going to be the coolest place to be in the city. It’s going to be artists, musicians, and activists plotting the peaceful revolution,’” said Metz.

And in some ways, the two spaces on Cermak—501, on the fifth floor, where tech rooms and office spaces are located, and 700, on the seventh, where GAs take place—have served their purpose as a creative, political hub for the movement.

“It’s a really cool place. We have amazing teach-ins, we’ve had conferences, we have beautiful artwork on the walls, food, murals,” said student and occupier Larissa Pittenger. The combined space is about 7,900 square feet of exposed brick, huge windows, desks, and, to many members’ relief, filing cabinets.

Between the night the decision to move to Pilsen was made, in the beginning of December, to the first indoor GA on January 20th, a month and a half went by. “That’s when people stopped showing up at GAs,” said Metz. “Because people felt like there wasn’t anything immediate to do.”

Chris Ivanovich, a member of the Press Committee, has an explanation: “It was winter, and fucking cold. Numbers were bound to drop.” But even after the move-in, Ivanovich concedes that the indoor meetings did little to encourage growth: “The movement was kept alive by conversations between smaller groups, in committees and around proposals. In that way, Cermak succeeded.”

At the Cermak site, they’ve also been building up a People’s Library (now at somewhere near 800 books), collecting art by members of the movement, and dealing with the normal problems that come from living and working in a shared space. Though members claim they effectively scared away the G8 summit through their aggressive organizing, participation in committees and at GAs has continued on a steady drop.

“There are probably 3-10 people right now who go to every GA, and spend most of their time at Cermak,” said Ivanovich. He adds, “but there are probably 20-30 more who are just as committed, but maybe are students, or have a job, and can’t make it out all the time.” The heart of the movement, it would seem, has moved from general assemblies to committees and smaller groups organizing around specific demonstrations.

Priorities for some members may have shifted, but others speculate that the space itself began to pose problems that distracted from OC’s movement.

During the GA on March 30, a newer member named Mandy took the figurative mic. “My name is Mandy, I’m going to Cermak later to sleep. I’m also going to eat there, drink there, and not do any work there,” she yelled. “Someone stop me. Please, somebody kick me out.”

Mandy’s rant was in reference to a proposal to ban a member who consistently visited Cermak to use the space’s Internet and store his things. He allegedly used threats of violence to bully other members into letting him stay late into the evenings, though he never attended GAs, and participated in none of the committees. That proposal passed with no opposition and four abstentions.

The last proposal on the floor was, in a way, an extension of the problem of policing members within Cermak. Members debated whether or not to hand in a 60-day notice for the 501 Cermak working unit, with proponents arguing that the space is a drain on resources and source of intra-movement conflict, discouraging regular participation by new potential occupiers.

But for opponents of the proposal, which was eventually tabled, the root of the issue is that the movement has yet to find a way to really take advantage of its indoor component.

“All we do now in 700 is stuff we could do in 501, and all be a little closer,” said Sam Sandmel, a member of the Press, Secretariat, and Social Media committees.

Where other Occupied cities, like Oakland and San Francisco, have fought desperately for an indoor location, Chicago is the only occupation discussing its relative merits and challenges. Members like Metz, who wasn’t present at the Friday GA, believe OC can work both in and outside of Cermak through the spring. “We have a great resource, and if we throw it away it’ll be a shame.”

During GA, a member named Margo summed it up: “Underutilized space to me sounds like underutilized minds.”

* * *

“The beauty of Chicago Spring is that it’s going to bring local and global issues into one space,” said Ivanovich. The events are clearly meant to evoke the revolutions during the Arab Spring. “We view them as brothers and sisters fighting in a companion struggle,” added Sandmel.

The Direct Action Committee has already made plans for two months worth of events, in conjunction with several other committees, numerous outside groups like STOP (SouthSide Together Organizing for Power), and the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign. On April 7, the kickoff day for Chicago Spring events, the Bridgeport Alliance is hosting brunch in the neighborhood’s Benton House Gardens community center to discuss local issues; the autonomous group Occupy El Barrio is hosting a Carnaval del Barrio in Pilsen “for a celebration of arts and city wide solidarity”; and Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. will be hosting a panel discussion with Rainbow/PUSH on the Occupy movement.

At 1pm, the smaller events will converge at Jackson and LaSalle, spending the rest of the afternoon at Butler Field, where workshops have been scheduled to engage in conversations about NATO, education, housing, and the movement. More demonstrations are planned for the following weekends in April, and other major events are slated for May Day, eventually culminating with marches and protests for the NATO summit on May 20 and 21.

Mitchell took a deep breath, focused his attention on a single point at the back of the room, and went for it. The 25-year-old mentioned his backstory—growing up in suburban Chicago with a single mother amid family turmoil. He talked about his experience as a community organizer. He hit on all the major policy points: curbing violence, creating jobs, balancing the budget. But the message he hoped would stick most with voters was the one Mitchell made at the very end: “Punch 61.”

On March 20, voters across Illinois will take part in primary elections to determine the candidates for each party on county, state, and national levels. All candidates hope for votes—such is the nature of a democracy. But for Mitchell, the election could come down to the votes in that room.

In the 26th District, where the only two candidates in the overall race are both Democrats (Mitchell’s opponent is local businessman Kenny Johnson), the winner of the primary will go unopposed on the November ballot. Notwithstanding unforeseen circumstances, the winner of this primary will be the next district representative.

Typically, voter turnout is low for primaries—the all-time low in Chicago was set in 2010, with 27.2 percent voter turnout citywide. While the concurrent Republican presidential primary might bring Republican voters to the polls, the voter turnout for Democrats is expected to be low again this year. And with only 89,000 people in the 26th District, every vote matters.

“It’s exhilarating,” Mitchell said after the event. “You know a lot of people are going to make their decision based on what you say up there.”

It’s not just a battle of rhetoric, though. The 26th District race has been, in large part, a race for endorsements. Mitchell’s opponent, Johnson, has found support from the likes of the Chicago Teacher’s Union and U.S. Representative Danny Davis. But Mitchell has picked up his fair share of big names as well.

On the wall of his campaign headquarters, white sheets of butcher paper are covered in handwriting listing the dozens of endorsements Mitchell has received, from the Sierra Club to Mayor Emanuel to Governor Quinn. Seated at a folded table beneath the sheets of paper, Mitchell allows the occasional “maybe” and “sort of” to slip into his speech. Yet beneath that hesitancy, a sense of conviction emerges.

“I think right now is the moment that our generation has to step up, I really do,” Mitchell says from behind black-rimmed glasses. “Because we are in such a difficult situation with our budget…the easy path is to start hacking away and chopping at stuff, to use the ax instead of the scalpel. But the question becomes for those of us who are my age, or really for a citizen of Illinois, period—what do we want our state to look like in the future?”

***

The 26th District runs along Lake Michigan from Streeterville on the North Side to the abandoned steel mills of South Chicago, stretching from the empty pit of the Chicago Spire to the vacant lots along East 63rd Street. President Obama’s house is under its domain, as are numerous public housing facilities. Extreme contrasts and contradictions of wealth, race, and culture, all bundled up in a single polity. Representing the 26th District is no small task.

“You throw in farmland somewhere, and it would really be a microcosm of Illinois or a microcosm of America,” Mitchell says.

Mitchell focuses, then, on what draws individuals together rather than what drives them apart.

“When you look at a district like this, it’s amazing how similar people are,” he says. “Universally, there’s a concern about making this district and this state the best possible place to live. Maybe there are varying degrees or different iterations of that concern, but I think people universally want to make sure we start to move in the right direction.”

This is where Mitchell relies on his experience as a community organizer.

“The point of community organizing is to build power,” he says. “It’s to get people together, because the two sources of power are organized people and organized money, and more generally the other side has more of the organized money so you have to organize the people.”

He called his work as an organizer “both the best and the hardest job I ever had. It was door-to-door work, church-to-church work. It was mostly one-on-one interviews with people…trying to find common threads.”

One project Mitchell worked on was a $425 million bill in Illinois known as the Urban Weatherization Initiative. It created a program that provides government support for basic energy efficiency upgrades in low-income homes across the state, done by local workers.

Mitchell helped develop the initiative as a way to increase employment in low-income areas while promoting green technology, and wrote the first draft of the legislation. Yet he says the idea was planted much earlier than his community organizing days, in Professor Sabina Shaikh’s Environmental Economics class at the University of Chicago.

“I was kind of a seller on the whole environmental movement when I first entered that class,” Mitchell says. “Sabina really challenged me on that, and tried to help me understand that, in trying to save our planet, we could also reinvest in our cities, reinvest in our rural towns, and use it as a mechanism to uplift poor people.”

The class was the beginning of an ongoing conversation between the student and his professor, who continues to praise Mitchell.

“I recall my first meeting with Christian after he graduated,” Shaikh says. “I was so impressed by how quickly he had engaged in local policy and how he had applied his intellectual curiosity as a student into real action on the South Side of Chicago.”

***

Mitchell worked as an organizer from 2008 until 2011, when he went to run Will Burns’s campaign for 4th Ward Alderman. He then worked for Cook County Commissioner Toni Preckwinkle as she attempted to settle in and pass her first budget. In September, Mitchell started collecting signatures to get his name on the ballot. In the last few years, between his political and community commitments, Mitchell has made a major investment in public service.

This path wasn’t always so clear for Mitchell. When he began college at the UofC, Mitchell planned on majoring in economics and becoming a sports agent in southern California.

That changed when a “gangster”-themed party on campus flared racial debate and controversy. The graduate student assigned to oversee his dorm, John Eason (now a professor of criminology at Arizona State), inspired him to get involved in organizing on campus to try to work against the biases the incident made apparent. As Mitchell became more active, Eason introduced him to Burns, who then was working in the state capital as a staffer.

“It shifted my whole scope,” Mitchell said of the experience. “It made me realize that there was still a lot to be done…that I needed to dedicate my life to creating understanding, to driving change, to making the world a better place—as corny as that may sound.”

He switched from studying economics to public policy, and got involved with a group called South Siders Organizing for Unity and Liberation (SOUL), which he would continue to work for after graduation.

He remains close with Eason. And as a testament to his relationship with Burns, Mitchell’s campaign headquarters sit in an adjacent suite to Burns’s aldermanic office in Bronzeville.

However, for Mitchell, the impact of the UofC went beyond the powerful connections and influential mentors. On a philosophical level, the school changed his basic approach to life.

“If I had to sum up the value I got out of the UofC, other than meeting some really great people, I learned that, no axiom, no matter how long held, no matter how sacred, should be above scrutiny,” he says.

This principle of constant reevaluation seems to guide Mitchell’s campaign more than any single issue.

For Mitchell, a successful term would mean: “having made a substantive contribution to shifting the conversation about what it means to define success in Springfield on any number of issues, and having made real progress toward dealing with our budget situation, and starting to shift the conversation toward the front-end investments we need to make to make this state more competitive in the future.”

More than a change to any specific policy, Mitchell wants to see positive change on a fundamental level in the way the state government approaches policy-making itself.

***

“You have to be a different kind of public servant to win here, to do well here, and even really to run here,” says Mitchell. “This district, in the demands of the people of their public servants, demands [you] to stay up on the issues, to read the bills, that you are publicly accountable.”

A host of impressive politicians have come out of the South Side in recent years, touting progressive policies and the promise of political change. In light of legacy, it is hard not to contemplate Mitchell’s future. With principled ambition, powerful backers, and the boon of youth, his future looks bright. But he, for one, is reluctant to speculate.

“Will Burns is one of my great mentors,” Mitchell says, “and one of the things he always says and that I believe very strongly is that, if you do the job in front of you well, the future takes care of itself.”

Open-ended and non-committal, it is the response of a politician. And, like the response of a good politician, it has more than a kernel of truth. Mitchell has set his sights on elected politics, and for now his focus is on getting people to the polls. Come March 20, Mitchell can do no more.

Eric Allix Rogers

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3411 West Douglas Boulevard has had many lives. At one time a church, and before that a synagogue, the Lawndale building has an imposing limestone facade topped with an enormous ornamented arch. The 99-year-old structure dwarfs the surrounding houses.

But inside it is in shambles. There are gaping holes in the roof; the floor is littered with debris; the stained glass windows are cracked. What was once a house of God now looks like a victim of his wrath.

The building, Anshe Kanesses Israel, was once the largest synagogue on the West Side. In 1962, Chicago Jews started moving to the suburbs and the neighborhood became predominantly black. Anshe Kanesses Israel turned into the Friendship Baptist Church. Now a faded sign beneath the arch bears the name of Shepherd’s Temple, a later congregation that hasn’t met since the 90s.  Left to vandals, water damage, and structural neglect, the building has become a public safety hazard. On December 21st, the City Department of Buildings issued an emergency demolition order, warning that the building is “in imminent danger of collapse.”

The demolition order has sparked action among a diverse group of Chicagoans—ranging from Preservation Chicago to community activists in Lawndale—who are now rushing to save it from the wrecking ball. Some want to save it for its history: as a synagogue it could seat 3500 people, and as a church it hosted a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. Some want to save it for its great architectural beauty: the impressive Byzantine Revival facade, the archway, the stained glass. And some just want to save it because Lawndale doesn’t need any more demolition orders.

To save this building—Anshe Kanesses, Friendship Baptist, Shepherd’s Temple—the activists will need to find an organization willing to buy a wrecked building in an economically depressed neighborhood. They will need to find an organization with a vision and, more importantly, cash.

“It really needs an angel to come and rescue it,” says Jonathan Fine, the president of Preservation Chicago.

They have a month to find one.

***

Robb Packer, an amateur historian, has written two books on the forgotten synagogues of Chicago, and he bubbles with enthusiasm for the subject. He has a lot to say concerning Anshe Kanesses Israel: the synagogue, built in 1912 by Russian Jews, was the first and largest of the 60 synagogues that would eventually dot the West Side. “It boggles the mind what a second-generation bunch of greenhorns were able to achieve,” he says. The congregation had “over 3000 members, 150 torahs, a school and a library.” A great center of learning, it was open 24 hours a day: “you could be there at midnight and see people studying,” he says. And the synagogue attracted “the most famous rabbis and cantors, ever.”

For Packer, documenting forgotten Chicago synagogues is something that transports him to a different time. “It paints a picture of Chicago that will never exist again,” he says. Lawndale once had around 125,000 Jewish residents. On West Douglas Boulevard alone there were three major synagogues and the Hebrew Theological College, which was demolished in October 2010 after two decades of vacancy. The Jewish People’s Institute, the epicenter of Jewish life on the West Side—and where Packer attended pre-school—now houses the Lawndale Community Academy, a public school just a block away from Anshe Kanesses.

Packer is pessimistic about the fate of the old synagogue—in fact, he says that its odds of survival are “zero.” His pessimism may spring from personal experience; since beginning his work in 2001, 50 or 60 of the over 400 buildings that he’s documented have been torn down.

“Chicago doesn’t care. Chicago doesn’t have a heart for its cultural gems,” he says. “I wish it did. In this economy there isn’t the will to do anything.”

However, Carey Wintergreen, an architect spearheading the effort to save the building, disagrees. He admits that “the city of Chicago has a long history of demolishing vacant buildings no matter how architecturally or historically important they are,” but he believes that this case is different.

He spoke with Beth Johnson, the special project coordinator for the city’s historical preservation division, who indicated that the city could be willing to appeal the emergency demolition permit on one condition: the preservationists must present a viable plan for someone to buy the building and keep it secure.

“They would work with us in court if we had a plan and backers,” says Wintergreen. “What we’re looking for is the concept, the organization that would potentially be interested in the building, and at least enough funds to make the building secure.”

There is only a small chance that in today’s economic climate someone would finance the complete renovation necessary to make the building useable, but Wintergreen argues that for almost the same cost as tearing down the building, it could instead be “mothballed.” Mothballing refers to the process of completely sealing a building to protect it from vagrants, vandals, and the elements. All the openings would be bricked in, and the roof would be reinforced with a protective membrane. Once the building is sealed, they would wait to make further improvements until the economic situation improved, or more cash came in.

“We could secure the building so that the historic structure could, five or 30 years from now, become the centerpiece of the future revitalization of North Lawndale,” says Wintergreen.

While local TIF funds or federal HUD grants might contribute to this process, Wintergreen warns that “the city may not buy the idea of mothballing the building with no concept for its future use.” To that end, Wintergreen, who is on the board of directors of the Chicago Jewish Historical Society, has been working with Preservation Chicago, Landmark Illinois, city agencies, libraries, and community groups to find someone with a plan for the building and the patience to wait an unspecified amount of time to use it.

“These vacant religious structures are an incredible challenge because they are so large and so difficult to re-purpose,” says Fine, whose organization listed 3411 West Douglas as one of its Top 7 buildings in peril. Nevertheless, he says that they’re “going to continue trying to find a party interested in re-purposing it. We’re not gonna give up until forced.”

Lorean Earles, a Lawndale resident who heard Dr. King’s 1965 speech at the Friendship Baptist church, says she hopes the building can be turned into a community center. “I would hate to see them tear it down,” she says. “I’d rather see it stay there, find something to put in there to help the community.”

The building’s current owners are Abundant Life World Outreach, a North-side ministry. After purchasing the building in 2007, Abundant Life’s Pastors Steve and Tracy Bartlett could not afford to renovate it or keep it secured—nor could they pay the numerous fines they received for not complying with safety codes. The pastors could not be reached for comment, but Wintergreen says that they bought the building for $500,000, and the city will charge hundreds of thousands of dollars more to demolish it, leaving them with over half a million dollars in debt and a vacant lot in Lawndale. It’s a fair guess, then, that they’re eager to sell to a new set of hands.

What’s clear, though, is that doing nothing is not an option. “You can demolish a building just by letting it sit,” noted Fine. If the city allows the building to stand as is, it will only continue to deteriorate and pose a serious public safety risk. Squatters could break in, start a fire for warmth, and accidentally cause a conflagration. Mothballing may be the only way to save the building from destruction, either by wrecking-ball or gravity.

For that, they need someone with “money and a plan,” says Valerie Leonard, a community activist in Lawndale. Her desire to save the church stems not only from its architectural and historical significance, but from what she calls a “visceral” reaction. The mortgage crisis, a slowing economy, and scores of foreclosures have led to the existence of over 1500 empty lots in Lawndale. “You get to a point where enough is enough. We’ve got enough empty buildings and enough vacant lots with nothing on it but trash,” she says. “It’s not good for your psyche [to get] rid of something culturally, architecturally significant.”

Even those who have no memories of the church or only notice it as they walk down Douglas Boulevard would be affected by the building’s disappearance, she claims. The lot would be an “eyesore” and instill a “feeling of despair.”

As such, Leonard has started a petition to stay the demolition. With over 500 signatures, the petition shows that “something about this building has struck a chord against racial and cultural lines.” Leonard estimates that 30-35% of the signers are from North Lawndale, 30% are from the North Shore, a heavily Jewish suburban community, and the rest are from other locations around the city, even from other countries.

Leonard says that she was told by the local alderman’s chief of staff, Trina Mangrum, that a public hearing will be held concerning the building near the end of February. At that hearing, most likely, they will announce the company awarded the demolition contract. So, according to Leonard, the preservationists have a month, at best, for “somebody to come out of the woodwork who’s got money and a plan.”

If they succeed, the temple will be mothballed instead of destroyed, and there it will wait, on 4311 West Douglas Boulevard, until a better age arrives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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.”