(Mehves Konuk)

Spring is in the air. Soon birds will be building their nests, couples will canoodle in newly-green parks, and students sick of their dorms or their roommates will begin the hunt for a new (or first!) apartment in Hyde Park. The world-weary staff of the Weekly, who collectively have occupied at least 30 apartments, are here to help you with the last.

This special feature has two sections. In the first part, we offer advice about practicalities such as hiring movers, knowing your legal rights as a tenant, and expanding your apartment search beyond Hyde Park. In the second, we provide information about several major Hyde Park landlords, including locations, prices, and amenities. In addition, last year’s housing issue with additional advice and landlords is available on our website at chicagoweekly.net/housing-guide—but be aware that rents and contact details may have changed. We hope this helps, and we wish you all good luck.

Neighborly Advice
Getting a Move On
Renters’ Rights
Renters Insurance
Subletting
Other Neighborhoods
How to Get Free Furniture

So, What are the Options?

(Sam Feldman)

Last Sunday afternoon, most of Shimer College crowded into a small room to discuss the future of their school. The Assembly—a democratic body in which all students, faculty, staff, and trustees have equal votes—has traditionally been the moral authority of the college, while legal authority rests with the Board of Trustees. In last Sunday’s special session, those two authorities clashed as the Assembly voted on resolutions condemning the Board’s recent actions and the college’s president.

The current conflict that threatens to rip Shimer apart is only the latest tribulation in the history of the tiny school, which bills itself as “Chicago’s Great Books College” and has an enrollment of a little over 100 students. Founded in 1853 in bucolic Mount Carroll in western Illinois, the college faced mounting debts and declining enrollment in the 1970s. In 1978 the Board of Trustees voted to shut down the school, but the faculty and students wouldn’t give up. They moved into a Victorian mansion in Waukegan at the mayor’s invitation and remained there for almost 30 years with a communal government centered around the Assembly. In 2006, the college moved again to its present location in a few buildings on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus in the hope of attracting more students. Until recently it remained tucked away there, largely unnoticed by the outside world.

But then Thomas Lindsay came along. The school’s new president was inaugurated last year and quickly stirred up opposition. “This thing really got going when President Lindsay fired the director of admissions without any internal consultation whatsoever,” says Professor Albert Fernandez, who also serves as a trustee and the Speaker of the Assembly. Lindsay then chose a replacement whom a search committee had twice rejected. In a meeting on November 15, the Assembly passed several resolutions calling on Lindsay and the Board to respect Shimer’s tradition of shared governance. In response, trustee Patrick Parker ’54 wrote a letter to the Assembly informing them that financial donors like himself “expect, in return for our support, that the rest of the community will do its job, i.e. for the teachers to teach, the students to learn, and the managers to manage.”

Parker’s letter was accompanied by very similar ones from five other trustees, all of whom had several things in common. All had been appointed to the Board very recently. All had no previous ties to Shimer. All attacked the school’s history of communal democracy. And almost all were prominent political conservatives, a point that articles in the Tribune and Chicago Reader have fixed on.

The letters caused an uproar among Assembly members, and tensions only rose over the following months. The next battle would be joined over the school’s mission statement, which needed to be reviewed as part of the reaccreditation process. An online petition in support of the current mission statement, posted in December, received 144 signatures—almost one and a half times the size of the student body—but Lindsay made it clear that he wanted a new statement. On February 7, the Assembly voted to retain the current statement. Two days later, the faculty sat down for a meeting with Lindsay in which he informed them that he would be meeting with faculty members individually “to ascertain their commitment to the new mission statement,” according to Professor and Dean of Students Stuart Patterson in an email interview. “To a person, the Faculty felt strongly that President Lindsay was indicating a linkage between commitment to his mission statement and employment at Shimer.”

The faculty’s response was a unanimous letter in support of the current mission statement that was read at the Board meeting on February 19 and 20, but to no effect. The vote, which was conducted by secret ballot for the first time Fernandez can remember, was 18 to 16 in favor of the new mission statement.

The resolution passed by the Assembly last Sunday took issue with the questionable process by which the Board had approved Lindsay’s mission statement. The day before the Board vote, Parker had informed the trustees of an agreement signed three years before with a charitable foundation that he claimed required the school to adopt a new mission statement before the next Board meeting. When the Board’s Executive Committee indicated its unanimous disapproval of the new statement, Lindsay had urged them to resign. In light of all this, the Assembly declared by an almost unanimous vote that it didn’t recognize the “legitimacy or authority” of the new mission statement.

The other scheduled resolution, that the Assembly “has no confidence in the ability of President Thomas Lindsay to lead Shimer College,” was tabled indefinitely after long and heated debate. “This is a very serious vote. It could well spell the death of the school,” said Patterson. “If that’s the will of the Assembly, then it’s the will of the Assembly to strike out on their own as a new college.” Owen Brugh ‘06, who attended the meeting, said that even considering the resolution sent a message to “the hardline Board members.” “I don’t think that they believe that this community is capable of this type of action,” he says. “Are you really sure we’re not capable of that?”

(Mehves Konuk)

Barack Obama doesn’t live here anymore, but his presence does.

A few times a week I walk past that sign. I work inside the security area, teaching elementary school students in an afterschool program that rents space in the huge, Byzantine-inspired KAM Isaiah Israel temple that faces the Obama home. Every time I enter the secure area, I feel myself enter a new kind of space.

Lift the metal barrier that blocks the sidewalk, walk to the corner towards the black sedan. You become suddenly conscious of your body, feeling watched from every direction at once, even when no one is looking at you. The car door opens; a Secret Service agent steps out.
“Afternoon. Where are you headed today?”
“I’m going to work in the temple.”
“Okay. Have a good day.”

The Secret Service agents who work on the site are real people: they smile, they are gracious, they are serious but never severe, and they will play with children. They have earned the trust of the neighborhood. But they do not discuss their personal experiences, and when asked even the simplest questions about their work, the agents regretfully refer to a saying they learned in the academy: “The United States Secret Service speaks with one voice, and I am not that voice.”

The house has long been Obama’s home, but what “Obama” means has changed a lot in two years. This neighborhood once knew Barack Obama the man, and it has seen the idea of Obama, that second presence, grow up around him. Now the man is gone, but the idea is still here. It is in the name printed across our winter hats, the face emblazoned in gold on our T-shirts next to the images of Malcolm and Martin, the Obama special on local restaurant menus, and in the enthralling illustration stenciled in layers of red, white, and blue above the word HOPE that hung from every lamppost on 53rd Street for months after the election.

The idea of Obama is in more than our clothes: it is in us. Like no other figure of this generation, he has become a reference for how we understand our world—not only our politics, but our individual lives, our history, the color of our skin, and the content of our character. The South Side’s native son has become the consolidated image of American hope, and this neighborhood is proud of him. But there is also a kind of trauma in a transition so intense.

The kids I work with remember when playing next to Obama’s house was a novelty. Now they climb over the riot-guards to retrieve lost soccer balls. One 11-year-old boy remembers watching Michelle Obama teach her youngest daughter how to ride a bike in the street in front of her home. The future First Lady held the seat of the bike for her wobbling daughter while Secret Service agents stood on the sidewalk and kept a perimeter around the intimate moment. The kids have also pointed out to me the flag that now hangs from the house’s front porch. Before the campaign there was none.

In the metal barriers and the black SUVs, there is also a reminder that Obama’s presence, because he represents such hope, must also show what we fear. I asked one of my students what she thought the house was being protected from. Five years old, no front teeth, beautiful brown eyes still focused on the book in front of her, she said, “Terrorists.”

It is hard to imagine that the security around Obama’s house is part of the same process that has produced the more recognizable and comforting images of his presidency. But it is. Most people who live near the President’s house have never met him, but they have met the people who protect him. And most of us will never meet Obama the man, but we live every day with a body of words, images, beliefs, and behaviors that carry our collective hope and fear, and that, no matter where we stand in relation to it, has a presence in our lives that is as real as metal and concrete.

There is nothing different about the air on the other side of the perimeter, but I feel that air differently, and I think anyone who crosses that barrier does too, even the Secret Service agents whose one voice will never say so. The air inside that barrier is hopeful and anxious, reassuring and deeply alienating. Walking around that barrier I have the hugely stupid urge to start sprinting across the lawn, or to do somersaults, to do anything at all to break the heavy normality enforced in that space. But I don’t. When I cross the barrier and step into that sacred, secured space, I can tell myself that the house through the trees on the left is just an empty brick building, that the security is a show, a formality. But it doesn’t matter what I tell myself. Inside that area there is a presence speaking that is louder than I am. One voice is speaking, and I am not that voice.

(Sarah Pickering)

The red barn sticks out like a sore thumb on a corner overlooking the highway. Painted on the exterior is a larger-than-life chicken. This genetic monstrosity dons a trucker’s garb, red lipstick, and a haircut worthy of Howard Stern. Inside, the smell of roasting meat and savory sauces is overwhelming. It’s the only hint of the larger kitchen in the back, completely hidden from view. Orders and payment are taken through bullet-proof glass, and a lively soundtrack of soul and gospel brightens up the otherwise gloomy interior.

The menu hints at their catering market, offering various sized pans of rib tips, hot links, catfish, and chicken, as well as several combos. Our modest party had ordered too much food: a half slab of ribs ($10.50), some hot links (a small order, $6.25, is one and a half foot-long links), and wings (7 for $6.50, 10 for $9.75). I-57 Rib House’s add-a-wing/add-a-link option allows you to add either to your order for $0.65 per wing or $3.25 per link. The menu includes a selection of traditional barbecue sides: okra, baked beans, coleslaw, and fries, which come with all meat items on the menu. The slaw is nothing special, although it’s complimentary if you request it at the time of purchase.

I-57 Rib Houses are take-out only establishments: there’s almost no seating offered inside, so your options are limited to eating in the parking lot or driving back home. Be warned either way: devouring these meals is a messy business. The hot links on their bed of fries were swimming in sauce. I-57 Rib House offers three varieties of sauce: mild, hot, and mixed. An uncommon strength among these is that they don’t underestimate the power of sweetness, although this leads to them being rather similar. The mild sauce is clearly sweetest of the three: a tangy, reddish syrup that resembles something one might find in Chinatown drizzled over sweet and sour chicken. It makes perfect sense when paired with the hot links, which are blackened and generously flecked with spicy red peppers.

The hot sauce on the wings was more sparingly applied, yielding to the glutinous grease of the large wing itself. The fried crunch had certainly diminished in the course of the car ride home, but the wing itself was moist and flavorful. It’s difficult to imagine eating a full slab of ribs, as the half slab was already gargantuan. Walking the fine line between tender and chewy, the ribs had been blessed with a slow cooking. Perhaps there had been an error in our order, but the mixed sauce, theoretically a fifty-fifty combination of the mild and hot sauces, seemed to pack the most heat. None of the sauces are particularly fiery, but the mixed sauce that coated the ribs picked up their smokiness, redefining the standards of Chicago barbecue.

The late weekend hours are an appeal to midnight snackers, as it’s open until 1:30am on Friday and Saturday nights. Be sure to call ahead during the day, though; the original Morgan Park location has an established presence in the community as a caterer of afternoon barbecues, and the staff is frequently preparing several large orders. The wait time for your individual order can be upwards of an hour on weekends. Despite the slow service and long distance from the CTA (although it’s reachable by bus or on foot from several nearby Metra stops), I-57 Rib House is an excellent reason to venture southward.
I-57 Rib House, 1524 W. 115th St. Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 11am-9:30pm; Friday-Saturday, 11am-1:30am; Sunday, 1:30-9:30pm. (773)429-1111. Other locations within city limits: 9707 S. Halsted St., 6514 S. Western Ave., 1227 E. 87th St.

The three nights of performances will focus on specific pieces by composers Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albéniz. The compositions will be framed by commentary from musicians, and from the Spanish novelist and art historian Antonio Muñoz Molina. The festival is organized by University of Chicago Presents and produced by the two founders of the Washington, D.C.-based Post-Classical Ensemble, American writer and music historian Joe Horowitz, and Spanish conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez. Their combined thematic and interdisciplinary approach is critical for the festival’s broader significance. “Through this music we are also examining what happened to Spain in the twentieth century,” says Gil-Ordóñez.

Under the dictator Francisco Franco, Spanish culture was administered by the state. Popular composers, including Joaquín Rodrigo, whose “Concierto de Aranjuez” is probably the most famous Spanish melody, were declared “official” composers of the fascist government. The music they produced stands accused of presenting a shallow, cosmetic image of Spanish tradition, with a simplified flamenco at its core. The musicians involved with the festival have a deep respect for flamenco tradition, but Horowitz explains that, “as popularized, it has become another one of those Spanish postcards. It can marginalize Spanish culture more than celebrate it.” The festival organizers hope that deep, directed listening will challenge this image of a picturesque and backwards Spain, which Muñoz Molina has summarized as “bullfighters, poverty, flies, and passion.”

Thursday night’s performance of Manuel de Falla’s “Concerto for Keyboard” is a centerpiece of the festival. In three short movements of a few minutes each, Falla condensed centuries of Spanish musical tradition; the first movement interprets the songs of the Spanish Renaissance, the second draws on sixteenth-century church music, and the third references the later keyboard school. The Chicago Chamber Musicians, with Gil-Ordóñez conducting, will play the concerto twice: once near the beginning of the evening, and again at the end. The material in between, including poetry from St. John of the Cross and choral music by the University’s Motet Choir, comes from the musical traditions that the Concerto references; the accompanying commentary will illuminate these connections. Muñoz Molina describes the effect of this educational listening: “The second time the concerto is played you have the physical experience of feeling your ears open.”

On Friday night, renowned Spanish pianist Pedro Carboné will play “Iberia,” a series of twelve pieces by composer Isaac Albéniz. Each piece evokes a different setting from Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century, from Granada’s gypsy quarter to a working-class neighborhood in Madrid. The “Iberia” is well-known in orchestral arrangements, but these abridged versions simplify the chromatically dense pieces to what Horowitz again calls “a selection of slick tourist postcards.” Carboné will play the epic “Iberia” as it was originally intended, on a single keyboard. Carboné and Molina will discuss how the piece prefigures the forms and techniques of modernism. On Saturday night, Ortiz will conduct Carboné and the University’s student orchestra in a program of orchestral music. In conjunction with the festival, an exhibit at the Smart Museum features drawings and sculptures by Julio González, and the classical music radio station WFMT (98.7 FM) will play twenty hours of Spanish music this week.

The festival coincides with Spain’s presidency of the European Union, and is co-produced by the Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones of the Spanish government and sponsored by both the Instituto Cervantes and the Consulate General of Spain in Chicago. “Beyond Flamenco” has yet to play for a Spanish audience, but the practice of redefining the parameters of national identity through a deep and collective listening of musical history has powerful significance for any audience. As Gil-Ordóñez suggests, “This music could be part of a future as well.”
Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th St. March 4-6. Thursday-Friday, 7:30pm; Saturday, 8pm. (773)702-8068. $20/$5 students. chicagopresents.uchicago.edu

This nightly apparition that haunts the corner of East Hyde Park and Cornell every night from 4 to 10pm is only a peripheral component of “Notes to Nonself,” an installation that has been hosted at the Hyde Park Art Center for the past 21 days and will remain until May 2. A long-distance collaboration between artist, musician, and psychotherapist Diane Christiansen and builder, puppeteer, and fellow artist Shoshanna Utchenik, “Notes to Nonself” is a totally immersive alternate world, complete with plywood trees, a dingy clubhouse, and a massive papier-mâché octopus, all framed by a canopy of wire-suspended clouds and the looming animation vaguely described above. The aural component, which is projected out to the street, is titled “Mastodons,” and was written and performed by Christiansen’s husband and usual bandmate, Steve Dawson.

Christiansen’s artistic repertoire is primarily restricted to the domain of, as she puts it, “iconography.” She found a partner in Utchenik back in 2006, while looking for someone to help her build a life-size cartoon character. Both graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, they naturally had mutual acquaintances and hit it off immediately. After their “cocoon girl character” was completed, however, Utchenik gave birth to her son, Oskar, and moved back to Slovenia.

Inspired by therapeutic notes that Christiansen and Utchenik sent to each other across the Atlantic for the past four years, “Notes to Nonself” features sentimental notes created both by the artists and visitors, which hang low from nearly invisible strands attached to the ceiling. “[Utchenik and I] decided to create an installation informed by and covered with our notes which we were exchanging weekly,” says Christiansen. “[We were] each drawing or writing on the other’s notes in this crazy Baroque pen pal fest, so that’s how it started.” The notes, which are largely comprised of whimsical imperatives (“Wear more blue!”) and truisms (“Leather is good in moderation”), add both a dynamic and distinctly intimate element to the installation, in that one can actually relive the experience of previous visitors.

The truly dynamic feature, however, will take place this Saturday, when Christiansen and Dawson team up with bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Frank Rosaly to perform songs off of Dawson’s new album, “I Will Miss the Trumpets and the Drums.” Dawson’s style—which can be sampled on stevedawsonmusic.com—blends the unabashed exuberance of ’90s bands like Polaris and the Smashing Pumpkins with the twangy poignancy of Simon & Garfunkel and Neil Young. Actually located in the installation, the concert will be accompanied by Utchenik’s friend and fellow puppeteer, Mark Kinsella, who Christiansen says will be “riffing off of the content of the show.”

On Saturday night, the disembodied voice of Steve Dawson will no longer haunt the corner of East Hyde Park and Cornell. But inside HPAC, a fascinatingly contrived kitsch landscape will finally come alive with the only soundtrack it has ever known, plus some improvisational puppetry.
Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. March 6. Saturday, 7pm. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org

Sitting on a small stage in the Experimental Station across from Chicago Public Radio host Steve Edwards, Michelle Alexander described the systematic discrimination against racial minorities by the United States’ criminal justice system. Author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” Alexander explained that the supposedly colorblind narcotics laws that came out of the War on Drugs specifically target people of color, especially young black men. This has led to mass incarceration of minorities, many of whom are stripped of their legal rights upon release. In the ’70s, before drug legislation was implemented, there were around 300,000 people incarcerated in America. Now there are over two million people in American prisons, Alexander said, and it’s not an accident that most of them are black.

What if, Alexander asked us to consider, the police treated drug use in college fraternities like they do in poor minority communities? What if they entered parties, lawfully seized the personal property of the offenders, sent 18-year-old University of Chicago students to jail for years, and stripped them of legal rights when they got out? A murmur rose up among us.

This discrimination is real, said Alexander, but it is not simple to explain. There are more black officers on police forces now than ever before, she pointed out to us, and there are more black men in prison now than ever before. She told us that she herself, an African-American civil rights lawyer born a generation after Jim Crow was dismantled, still finds her perceptions colored by racial biases.

“Martin Luther King, Jr. used to say over and over again in his speeches that racial caste systems are supported more by racial indifference than racial hostility,” Alexander reminded us. “The same thing can be said about mass incarceration. We don’t care enough as a nation about black and brown youth, and if we did, the system of mass incarceration would not exist.”

When the discussion ended, many listeners lingered. We passed out fliers, we exchanged numbers, we filled the space with conversation. We left that small crowded room slowly, because we felt connected, and we did not want to be indifferent.

Clare Feinberg contributed reporting to this article.

(Mehves Konuk)

Upon hearing that Chicago’s Queer Intercollegiate Alliance was planning to stage a flash mob on the steps of the Art Institute, I was instantly reminded of the scene in Gus Van Sant’s movie “Milk” in which a furious horde of gay rights activists spills out into the streets of San Francisco and sends a trolley careening off of its rails. So imagine my disappointment when I arrived at the Institute at 6pm last Thursday, only to find that the “flash mob” consisted of about thirty blue-lipped college students (a bit less than the 550 who had replied “attending” on Facebook) forming a disjointed, shivering rainbow and being corralled to one side of the steps by slightly amused museum guards.

Participants in the alleged mob had intended to form a sprawling spectrum, in which students of different Chicago colleges were to don different colors. The end result, however, was severely lopsided: the most widely represented color in this righteous rainbow was red, Loyola University Chicago’s color, which probably correlates to the fact that the organizer of the event, Roland Miranda, attends Loyola. Although orange (University of Illinois at Chicago) had fewer constituents, it should be noted that it boasted one towering activist in tangerine-colored spandex leggings and a ginger wig.

The crowd, rather than adhering to their “flash” moniker, strayed from the congregate-and-disperse protocol established by flash mobsters like Improv Everywhere and participants in the World Naked Bike Ride. The handful of chilly, cheery students mostly stood in a disorganized line beside an unnecessary barricade as at least five photographers (including one from the Weekly) snapped photos of the dedicated bunch in their multicolored array.

It was unclear whether this particular gathering constituted a protest. There seemed to be no particular grievance that the Queer Intercollegiate Alliance wished to air, no Ninety-Five Theses to nail to the door of our heteronormative society. The group eventually moved into the galleries, where they were asked not to block the paths of other museum patrons. After some grumbling, the crowd shuffled into a room full of Impressionist portraits, where they were confronted by an entirely different interpretation of the colors of the rainbow.

“We’re an organizing drive of working people, people who are out of work, people on fixed incomes, joining together to gain the strength to determine our future. More and more of us are working twice as hard for half as much and more of us can’t get access to the things we need, like medical care. We know that there is strength in numbers, and we know that it takes organization to change our conditions.” Miller hands the young woman a pamphlet.

The concerns that Miller voices are just some of the many problems the Midwest Workers Association, an independent, member-based workers’ advocacy organization run out of Chicago’s South Side, was created to address. The MWA is geared towards providing a membership of socially conscious workers with survive-and-get-on-your-feet services and referrals to ensure a minimum quality of life, allowing them time and mental energy to organize to fight these larger problems. “We don’t just treat the symptoms of the problem, but are trying to build ourselves up to address the problems itself,” Miller said.

Back on the street, Miller asks the woman at the door, “Do you work?” The woman answers that she’s a sales associate at Target. Although she works full-time, her wages are far from providing basic sustenance. She wants to move away from home, but relies on health and insurance benefits through her mother’s work, and she makes barely enough to provide her son and herself with food and clothing.

A few houses down, Miller’s team is invited into Harry’s* home. The front room of Harry’s apartment is tidy and modern, furnished with a new leather seat set and rug. His son plays a combat video game on a large flat-screen TV. Another child is chatting on the Internet. The comfort of his home gives a false sense of security.

Harry works as a lineman at an auto parts company in Chicago Heights. Over Harry’s twelve years working at the plant, it has increasingly switched from full-time to temporary workers. Although Harry’s job provides health insurance benefits and pays enough to allow for luxury purchases, he’s a non-union worker, and fears benefit and hour cutbacks, or even a layoff, in the future.

Harry and the Target associate are among six new members added to MWA on Saturday’s canvass. Economic insecurity in post-recession America, with 222 applicants for every living-wage low-skill job available, has made participation in a workers’ advocacy organization like MWA especially appealing to individuals like them. “For many people, it’s about saying: I don’t like the direction where things are going, and I don’t like future prospects for me,” Miller said.

All of MWA’s initiatives—mainly relief programs, including clothes distribution, non-emergency dental and medical care provision, and a job-referral program—are intended to help Chicagoans “meet day-to-day needs, so [they] can survive while [learning] the skills to build the solidarity to fight to determine [their] fate and [their] future,” according to the organization’s outreach literature.

Since its founding in 1996, the MWA has grown to 10,000 members, and has drawn interest from both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum.

The association has successfully gained a membership base of South Side and West Side business owners and church, academic, and community leaders who provide broad support to the organization. Because the MWA doesn’t take government and foundation funding, which could influence organization activity, it relies on financial and logistical support from more affluent members. The current MWA location, at 5152 South Halsted Street, was donated by a member upon retirement and rehabilitated into an office space by the University of Chicago’s Habitat for Humanity club over a three-year period. Donations from businesses like Seattle’s Best Coffee, Whole Foods, Angie’s Bakery, and Hyde Park Produce supply the organization’s food pantry, and a number of legal, medical, and dental professionals offer services to members free of charge.

The MWA has also made numerous connections with Chicago’s religious communities. The organization has spoken at numerous Catholic and Episcopalian churches, and just opened a second office, focused on clothes distribution, at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bridgeport. Social justice classes at Loyola, DePaul, and Francis Parker High School send students to work with the MWA for service learning projects, and DePaul University Professor Thomas O’Brien volunteers with MWA and has been especially helpful fighting against gas price increases.

Despite the MWA’s broad membership base and current support, the organization is still in the process of building up its numbers, and runs biweekly membership canvasses in low-income South Side and West Side neighborhoods to assess household needs, gain information about working conditions, and spread awareness about the organization.
In addition to providing benefits to members, the MWA also holds weekly Workers Benefits Council Meetings where members determine which issues are most important to address. Although the MWA envisions this council as a place where non-union worker-members can get together, organize, and even form spin-off unions, most meetings have been directed towards organizing campaigns against a package of rate increases and disconnections proposed by Peoples Gas.

In 2008, Peoples Gas, Chicago’s main utilities supplier, sent disconnection notices to 80,000 customers with back bills. The company, despite 61.3 percent profit increases in 2008, also proposed a $160 million rate increase for 2010.
Reacting against the rate increase and disconnection notices, the MWA organized a campaign that included lectures at community centers, churches, and university classrooms, organized a letter-writing campaign, and sent members to speak out against Peoples Gas at Chicago Utilities Council meetings. This campaign has been the MWA’s most successful, and led Chicago to cut the rate increase by $90 million.

An outgrowth of this campaign is the MWA’s Winter Survival Campaign, one of the programs the MWA offers to help low-income and under-employed members meet day-to-day needs. The campaign addresses the problem of unaffordable heating fuel and is intended to prevent cold-related deaths, both by direct aid and by fighting for more affordable utilities services in the future. As a part of the campaign, the MWA distributes high-protein food, electric heaters, and blankets, and provides legal aid to members whose electricity has been shut off.

Five years ago, in June 2005, Virginia Miller was on a leave of absence from the University of Chicago’s evolutionary biology PhD program when she began volunteering with the MWA. Having encountered extreme poverty while conducting research in highly stratified countries like Panama, she began to question the value of her studies.

“As much as I loved research, I realized that I really care about people. And I realized that we don’t need technology and more scientific research to solve the biggest problems facing most people.” Miller said. “Today, there are enough resources so that housing, and getting enough to eat, and getting adequate heating, shouldn’t be a problem. And so I took a leave of absence, and I started talking to fellow students about how to address [issues of inequality and underdevelopment.] A lot of people were like, we can’t change that, that’s too complicated.”

On her way one day to meet a friend over coffee, she ran into two volunteers from the organization doing outreach on the corner of 57th Street and University Avenue. She was immediately attracted to the organization’s method of addressing social problems.

“When I first visited the office, I talked about those things, and no one told me I was crazy. I was looking for answers about why these problems still exist, and I was not just interested in treating the conditions of the problem,” Miller said.
Miller began organizing soon after, and three months later, she had traded her studies at the University of Chicago for a full-time organizing position.

Miller is satisfied by the progress she has seen the MWA make over her five years working with the organization. The MWA still needs further support to achieve its vision; although the organization envisions itself as providing all uninsured clients with adequate non-emergency medical care, the MWA currently works with only one doctor who can only see two MWA members each month. To sufficiently serve its constituency, the MWA desperately requires the time of more health care workers as well as dentists and lawyers. But fourteen years after its founding, says Miller, the MWA is “at an exciting point where we can take on more and more fights.”

*Name has been changed.

(Mehves Konuk)

“So, do you meditate?” He is surrounded by semi-filled bottles of different colored oils and powders labeled with names like Love, Dragon’s Blood, and Peace.

“Is there any particular type of Buddhism you’re interested in?” His subject mentions a few names, and they are greeted with hearty recognition by Reverend Stitch. Candles ($19.95 each), a couple of books, a package of incense ($5.95), and some bath salts lie between the two individuals. Reverend Stitch is trying to explain to his customer how she can empower herself to feel better.

“I’m going to tell you the truth. I’m trying to not feed into the negativity,” he says. The friend that brought her to Augustine’s, as it is affectionately referred to by its staff and customers, practices Hoodoo herself. An African-American system of folk magic with European and Native American influences, Hoodoo is just one of the many kinds of spiritual systems supported by the supplies available at Augustine’s. Reverend Stitch explains that many of the people who come to Augustine’s already follow practices such as Buddhism, Herbalism, Santería, and Mexican magick, but most come for help with a loving attitude.

Although one can find the Reverend Stitch behind the counter most days, Augustine’s is really the work of Reverend Carolyn (both reverends are non-denominational). Reverend Stitch describes her as “a down-to-earth lady with four children who is quite spiritually brilliant.” She also practices Hoodoo, and has owned Augustine’s for about seven years, although it was open before that under different management. Reverend Carolyn agrees with Reverend Stitch about the mission of the store. “It’s a place of empowerment, and that’s what we teach—we want to help people to get in touch with their inner power, to get in touch with their truth. We seem to attract people who are ready to grow, and that’s the community we draw from,” she explains. Reverend Carolyn accounts for the path of the store by saying that she stocks it according to her customers’ wants and needs. “When I want something, I tell my Oversoul God-mind what I need and it usually walks through the door.”

Felicitously, this method has been pretty successful so far. Augustine’s stocks a wide variety of goods, and their customer service is meticulous and focused. They even offer classes, with titles as intriguing as Basic Crystals and Candle Reading, and Northern European Shamanism. Assuredly, many would greet the staff and customers of Augustine’s with a cocked eyebrow and a doubtful expression. But whether one subscribes to the beliefs touted by the shop or not, the attempt offered by the staff to help their customers is genuine. Though Reverend Stitch admits that you could use the oils sold at Augustine’s as perfume or to scent your house, he says, “The joke is that we really are a serious store and deal with serious stuff. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun!”

“I make sound effects to make it all more mystical,” he clarifies while raking his customer’s palms—a process he hopes will help change her negative energy.

All jokes aside, Reverend Carolyn makes it clear that Augustine’s is not about hokey nonsense. “Augustine’s is different [from other spiritual goods stores] because we base our teachings on truth. We don’t tell people what to do—we want them to talk to their Oversoul God-mind. It’s about getting power from and control over your own mind.” Reverend Stitch adds to this statement with his own round-up of the store’s strong points: “We’re a great mix of hands-on folk magic and things that work. We’re really honest, our grasp of humanity is wiser [than many New Age stores], and we’re pretty down-to-earth.”
Upcoming Classes: Talking to the Spirit, Basic Mediumship; Introduction to Tarot part I, Major Arcana; Basic Crystals and Candle Reading part I; Healing with the Chakras; Northern European Shamanism.
Augustine’s Authentic Spritual Goods, 3327 S. Halsted St. Monday-Thursday 11-7pm; Friday-Saturday, 11am-6pm; Sunday, noon-4pm. authenticspiritualgoods.com