Category Archives: Communities

What’s next after elections

Communities, Politics

The overlook at Galien County River Park
The following is a slight re-working of something I read at “The Word on 103rd,” a local storytelling showcase at Made Artisan Collective in Beverly. If you think some of this sounds familiar, it is. It’s taking ideas from this post and this one and re-contextualizing them around our recent mayoral election. It seemed to strike a nerve with folks so I’m posting it here.

Maybe you voted for Brandon Johnson. Maybe you didn’t.

Either way, you will at some point in his administration find yourself tempted by cynicism. There are many, many people who will benefit from telling you that Brandon Johnson is some kind of fraud. They will want to create a narrative around his actions or his administration that tells you Brandon Johnson the Mayor is not like Brandon Johnson the campaigner. They will want to paint his inevitable need for compromise as a failure or a lie.

But that’s because campaigns are about possibilities. Governing is about limits. Campaigns are about speaking to specific people. Governing is about the best possible solution for everyone. And that means disappointing some people.

Cynicism is comforting, but it poisons you a little. And that poison numbs you just enough to keep you from being disappointed because you never allow yourself to be hopeful. But cynicism also keeps you from trying. Cynicism is a self-created obstacle we put in our own way when we elevate a candidate above ourselves and they turn out to be unworthy of the pedestal we put them on.

We have to stop falling in love with candidates and learn to be their partners.

Ta-Nehisi Coates said this thing I think about all the time:

“We have this idea of elections as this kind of sacred ritual that one is undertaking, that you should be inspired and in love with the candidate. But I often think people need to think about it more like taking out the trash. It’s a thing that you should do. Brushing your teeth is hygiene. So when I think of who to vote for, the question isn’t how much of my own personal politics do I see in this person so much as how much do I think this person can actually be influenced by my politics or the politics of the people around me.”

You can substitute the word “elections” or “vote” with the phrase “doing politics” in the above paragraphs and it still works. And sums up my own philosophy.

Look, I love civic life. But it is neither meant to be a March Madness bracket nor an Aaron Sorkin production. Most days, there is no “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet” speech to be heard. It is supposed to be boring in the way your refrigerator should be boring: no scary noises; no rotted food; just a quiet, dependable hum in the background. It’s not inspiring, but it provides comfort, care, and calm.

Are you inspired by brushing your teeth? No, but you do it. Because otherwise a very meaningful part of your life will decay, rot, and die. We have to normalize thinking about voting as brushing our teeth even if we’re not inspired by our toothbrushes.

And just like you brush your teeth every day (and my god if you’re not doing that please start) we have to find ways to do politics every day. Some people call this activism. I prefer to call it the exercise of your individual power. Because to quote the title of a book by Eitan Hersh: “Politics Is For Power.” It is not posting articles on social media that you’re mad about or listening to bros on podcasts or even watching that nerdy guy in the khakis and his big-ass map.

The real work of inspirational politics doesn’t happen in the voting booth or in talking about politics at parties. It takes action that happens long before we step in the voting booth and long after. And on this point – Lord help me – I find myself quoting fucking Noam Chomsky which is not a thing I would expect to be doing:

“The left position has always been: You’re working all the time, and every once in a while there’s an event called an election. This should take you away from real politics for 10 or 15 minutes. Then you go back to work.”

As the saying goes, just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you. So if you’re looking for ways to keep yourself engaged, start with the smallest unit of government in your life.

The smaller the unit of government, the more immediately responsive it can be, both in terms of your ability to exert influence on it and the likelihood of you getting a response to your email, phone call, or letter. This could be your alderman, your local school council, your park supervisor, your County Commissioner, or your state rep.

As you think about where to spend your time, think about those who have it worse than you right now.

Broadly speaking, the answer to this question is pretty simple: Those at risk are the people whose point of view is least represented when decisions are getting made.

Who’s dealing with food insecurity? Who feels the most alone? Whose health is most at risk? Who is least likely to receive a just outcome in the criminal justice system? Who feels the least safe?

We could get overwhelmed by the bigness of some of these questions and the problems they reveal. So let’s reduce this to the smallest unit of assistance you can provide each day.

When you’re in a room where a decision is being made ask yourself some questions: How will this affect those who have less access to money and services than I do? Who’s being left out of this conversation? Are you able to speak from a place of knowledge that can guide this decision to a more equitable outcome for that group? If not, can you bring someone into the room who can? Or ask to defer the decision until that point of view is heard? Then do that.

That’s politics.

When you start thinking about all the trouble in your world there’s a tendency to get overwhelmed or to feel like you need to learn how to do a million new things to make a difference.

Learning new things is great! But more than likely, the thing you can do better than other people might be the skill that a non-profit or community organization needs the most from its volunteers.

Can you write? Can you manage projects? Do you have a technical skill? A certain kind of way with design, spreadsheets, or budgeting? The more niche the skill, the more expensive the hire and the bigger the obstacle it is for most organizations. You’re going to be their favorite volunteer.

When it comes to donating money, think small(er). I love the ACLU, too, but if you Google “immigration legal rights,” “environmental justice” or some other cause plus the name of your city, town, or state you’ll find an organization doing the work that needs the money more than a place with built-in name recognition. And this goes double for the do-gooder no one has heard of running for an elected office in your district. That person needs your money a lot more than someone ten states away who is running for the House of Representatives against Mitch McConnell and on MSNBC three times a week.

Finally, look for the people already doing this work. There is a tendency among…well, white dudes, to imagine they have the solution others lack. But for their brilliant insight, the problem would be solved.

My dudes: do not be the person that offers help that isn’t needed. Instead, amplify what others are already doing. These folks do not need your vision or your strategy. They don’t need leadership, they need followship. Allies are fine, but accomplices are better.
You may feel uncomfortable. Doing this work on behalf of others may bring to light things about you or people you’re close to that you would have preferred to keep in the darkness.

The good news is short-term loss will become long-term gains over time – for you and everyone else.

It’s really easy to slip into cynicism. But hope is a much harder drug, if you’re up for it. See, hope is not a fuzzy, rainbow-covered alternative to the facts on the ground. It is a collection of sparks that need oxygen. Cynicism douses the sparks before they become flames. Hope is a vision of a path that begins in your immediate vicinity.

Hope is the ability to clear the path as it gets harder to see. Cynicism pretends that but for all these excuses and the actions of others, we would be in a better place. It’s an imaginary future that means we never have to compromise or accept disappointment.

Hope is the acceptance of our current moment and all its disappointments coupled with the knowledge that we can do better.

Hope is not waiting for someone to save us. Hope is saving ourselves.

The intersection of the Dan Ryan and Chicago segregation

Chicago, Communities, Politics

When I think about racism, segregation and the systems put in place to reinforce them, the Dan Ryan Expressway comes to mind. In part because of the complexity of it.

The Dan Ryan runs eleven miles, from 95th Street on the Far South Side to what’s now known as the Jane Byrne Interchange – the point where the Dan Ryan, the Eisenhower and the Kennedy meet.

As you drive north on the Dan Ryan, you see the skyscrapers of downtown rising up like Oz at the end of the yellow brick road. Fourteen lanes of traffic serve 300,000 people a day by one count. It’s either packed with cars during rush hour or, in off-peak times, Mario Kart come to life.

The Dan Ryan is not for the faint of heart or student drivers.

Growing up, the Dan Ryan was Chicago for me. A fearsome, muscular roadway that also sported a 75-foot-long, 40-foot high set of flashing red lips. Schools, businesses, and culture lined it. The Dan Ryan’s road signs tantalized with exciting places to visit if you took this exit or that one. Two versions of Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox, have towered over it at 35th Street.

American Pharoah notes the Dan Ryan Expressway was one of three expressway systems built under Mayor Richard J. Daley – the Stevenson and the Kennedy are the other two. Its construction was made possible through the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.

The book also argues that it reinforced what had up until then had been a historical dividing line between Black and white Chicago neighborhoods.

The original plans for the Dan Ryan called for it to cross the Chicago River almost directly north of Lowe Avenue, Daley’s own street, and then to jag several blocks, at which point it would turn again and proceed south. But when the final plans were announced the Dan Ryan had been “realigned” several blocks eastward so it would instead head south along Wentworth Avenue. It was a less direct route, and it required the road to make two sharp curves in a short space, but the new route turned the Dan Ryan into a classic barrier between the black and white south sides.

Langston Hughes was beaten up for crossing Wentworth Avenue, an unofficial dividing line between Chicago’s Black Belt and the white neighborhoods of the South Side. This included Bridgeport where Daley grew up. It was a line defended with violence by the Hamburg Athletic Club, of which Daley was a member in his youth, during the period of the 1919 race riots. “Athletic clubs” or “youth clubs” in this time were often covers for white gang activity or political power – or both.

The Dan Ryan’s 14 lanes of traffic would make it much harder to cross Wentworth Avenue by creating a significant obstacle in access to it from the east.

Pharoah also notes the construction of the Dan Ryan was announced less than a month after the City Council approved the building of the Robert Taylor Homes. The Robert Taylor project would be built in the State Street Corridor where other large public housing was already located: the Harold Ickes Homes, Dearborn Homes, and Stateway Gardens.

The overwhelming majority of the people in these communities were Black and lacked access to higher-income jobs, in large part because of the warehousing approach Chicago and other large cities used to provide housing that clustered Black people in parts of the city that separated them from white people.

The State Street housing projects, almost all of which are now long gone, were located just east of the Dan Ryan, which was just east of Wentworth Avenue. The violence that occurred in the 1919 riots, often from whites going into Black neighborhoods, was concentrated in a few places, particularly along State Street, decades before the Dan Ryan was contemplated.

The construction of the Dan Ryan in close proximity to the housing projects of the South Side did not increase the access of their residents to the opportunities of jobs, commerce, and attractions. If anything, it reinforced the lack of access. A 1998 New York Times article quotes one resident of the Robert Taylor Homes describing the projects as a “public aid penitentiary.”

It’s hard to find a more obvious metaphor for Chicago segregation. But the way the story plays out is more complicated than it would seem.

The racial makeup of many South Side neighborhoods changed significantly in the years following the construction of the Dan Ryan with many previously white neighborhoods becoming majority Black. According to a June 2020 report from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, Bridgeport itself is now 39% Asian, 33% white, 23% Latino, and 2% Black.

As a WBEZ Curious City segment points out, the Dan Ryan didn’t create the segregation in this part of the city. The story notes author Dominic Pacyga’s Chicago: A Biography says that “political power, street gangs, railroad viaducts, and railyards — posed greater obstacles to blacks’ expansion into white neighborhoods.”

Another source in this piece says the Dan Ryan “helped expedite the exodus of the white community from the Southwest Side.”

It’s an inescapable fact that Chicago’s built environment often reinforced or exacerbated segregation. And that’s before you get into the history of redlining and other ways in which racism and real estate intersected.

For instance, in the map for the WBEZ segment, the proposed and final routes of the Dan Ryan are shown. The final route meant more Black-owned homes that white homes would be eliminated to make way for the expressway.

When you consider how Black families have more of their assets and wealth concentrated in their homes than white families you see the institutional effects of racism are often complex and indirect.

—

Now, none of us built the Dan Ryan Expressway; it opened in 1961 – years before many of us were born. We weren’t consulted about the route. But the 300,00 people who use it each day benefit from its convenience and speed. We can’t ignore that.

Should we tear up the Dan Ryan Expressway and rebuild it completely? No. Nobody’s arguing that.

We should still recognize that the construction of it reinforced a desire on the part of those who built it to keep Black people and white people separated.

Besides, it’s not like the use of the Dan Ryan Expressway is killing black motorists at a higher rate than white motorists.

Or the tools and training given to the staff of the Illinois Department of Transportation put them in a position where they have to choose between their lives or the people using the road.

Or we have to hold fundraisers because we aren’t equipping them with enough fluorescent vests to wear when they are in harm’s way.

Or the people who work at IDOT are committing suicide at a higher rate than the national average.

If that were happening, we’d definitely need to think about a complete rebuild because it’s harming everyone involved.

Want to make things better in 2021? Ask these four questions

Communities, Politics, ,

Chicago under the El

In the wake of president-elect Joe Biden’s victory, there’s been a question of what will happen to all of the activism of the past four years.

Specifically, we’re talking about the people who, for the first time, found themselves marching in the streets, joining a political organization, or organizing for change during the Trump administration. We might also count those who, this summer, felt called into the fight for racial justice in a way they hadn’t before.

Maybe you were in that number. Maybe your friends and family were. (Or maybe you’d been there for years and helped those folks find a place in the fight. If so, thank you. Also, you could probably use a nap.)

We have to acknowledge that Trump was not the cause of our polarization and division. Like COVID-19, he took advantage of an environment starved for answers—one filled with mistrust, and prejudice. A divided society lacking a shared set of facts, beliefs, resources and goals. No common project.

The cracks were there, but Trump made them wider and deeper. He’ll soon be gone from the White House, but the cracks will remain.

Some groups of people will have the privilege of not feeling the intensity of these divisions every day. But white supremacist nationalism, climate threats, and the ongoing fight against the spread of COVID-19 (which will evolve into a larger question of how to prepare for and fight the next pandemic) will remain as global and national menaces. The list of local problems could fill a couple of pages.

When you’re not plagued by existential threats with a clear villain, where do you place your focus and how do you spend your time? How do you unite people who have similar interests but disparate backgrounds?

My goal here is to try and answer some of those questions. This isn’t intended to be prescriptive. It’s a template or framework on which to layer your own interests and apply it to your own community. These things work best when you take from them what works for you, discard what doesn’t, and add in what you need. Think of it like a civic quiche.

With that, here’s what you can ask yourself as you think about how to help make life better for those close to you. I’ll start with what I think is the most important question because everything else flows from it.

What is the smallest and nearest form of governance in my life?

I say this with love: If you know the names of the Democratic candidates running in the Georgia Senate runoff, but don’t know the name of your alderman, county commissioner, or statehouse rep then you have some work to do.

Just using the examples above, we can see huge community impacts: who can or can’t open a business in your neighborhood (alderman), how money is allocated toward health and policing (county commissioner), and how legislative maps are drawn (statehouse rep), which is a building block of fair elections locally and nationally.

The smaller the unit of government, the more immediately responsive it can be, both in terms of your ability to exert influence on it and the likelihood of you getting a response to your email, phone call, or letter.

It’s important to consider this in terms of government and governance, both elected and unelected.

For example, how do decisions get made about how your community gets educated? If you live in Chicago, your public school has an elected local school council. LSCs have the power to, among other things, decide how to spend money and choose the principal. (If you live elsewhere, your school district board has similar powers.)

Did you know that as a member of your community you can vote in your LSC’s election or run for a spot on the LSC as a community representative even if your kid doesn’t go to school there? Did you know we just had those elections in November?

If you don’t have a kid in your neighborhood public school, what happens at the school still matters to you. Good public schools mean good real estate values, business development, and public safety.

Who is the supervisor of your local park? They decide how often the equipment gets maintained which can affect whether a kid gets hurt or not – or the access they have to ways to stay active. Healthy kids mean less money spent on health care which means more money to spend on restaurants, shops, etc. which means more of that gets built in your community. All of which contributes to safe, welcoming neighborhoods.

Then there’s the unelected governance that comes in a variety of forms.

Who sits on your library board? The board makes decisions about what your community can read for free, another form of public education. This board is likely appointed. It’s important to know by whom. Is there a neighborhood association in your area? They’re probably volunteers and make decisions about public safety, tree plantings, or block parties.

As the saying goes, just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.

Some forms of governance are invisible unless you take the time to look for them. They definitely don’t get covered on that political podcast you listen to every week. In Chicago, we have City Bureau’s Documenters who are bringing some transparency to these smaller units of government. Your property tax bill is a good place to start getting familiar with some of them.

That’s the what. Then there’s the who.

Who is most at risk right now?

If you’re trying to decide how to make things better, think about those who have it worse than you right now.

Broadly speaking, the answer to this question is pretty simple: Those at risk are the people whose point of view is least represented when decisions are getting made.

Who’s dealing with food insecurity? Who feels the most alone? Whose health is most at risk? Who is least likely to receive a just outcome in the criminal justice system? Whose schools lack the most funding? Who feels the least safe?

We could get overwhelmed by the bigness of some of these questions and the problems they reveal. So let’s reduce this to the smallest unit of assistance you can provide each day.

When you’re in a room where a decision is being made ask yourself this question: How will this affect those who don’t look like me or have less access to money and services than I do? Are you able to speak from a place of knowledge that can guide this decision to a more equitable outcome for that group? If not, can you bring someone into the room who can? Or ask to defer the decision until that point of view is heard? Then do that.

As you think about the moments when things happen, ask yourself the next question.

What skills and resources do I have?

When you start thinking about all the trouble in your world there’s a tendency to get overwhelmed or to feel like you need to learn how to do a million new things to make a difference.

Learning new things is great! Educating yourself on issues is important! But more than likely, you already know something or can do something better than other people. Think about what that is and who could be helped by it. The thing you can do better than other people might be the skill that a non-profit or community organization needs the most from its volunteers.

Can you write? You can amplify your impact by writing an outline of a script that empowers others to use their voices.

Do you have a technical skill? A certain kind of way with design, spreadsheets, or budgeting? The more niche the skill, the more expensive the hire and the bigger the obstacle it is for most organizations. You’re going to be their favorite volunteer.

Can you manage projects? The path between idea and execution is often fraught. You might make the difference here.

Are you someone who knows people who can do the above? Some of the most powerful people are those who connect those with a need to those with a solution.

Finally, can you spare 20 dollars a week (or more)? Give it to an organization making a difference somewhere. Ask others to do the same. If you feel comfortable asking people for money, start a fundraiser.

Again, think small(er). I love places like the ACLU, too, but if you Google “immigration legal rights,” “environmental justice” or some other cause plus the name of your city, town, or state you’ll find an organization doing the work that needs the money more than a place with built-in name recognition.

This leads us to the last question.

Who is already doing this work?

There is a tendency among those with power and abilities – usually white people and usually men – to imagine they have the solution others lack. But for their insight, the problem would be solved.

No.

Do not be the person that offers help they don’t need. Instead, amplify what others are already doing.

Those already doing this work do not need not our vision, our strategy. They need the tactical benefit that comes with numbers. They don’t need leadership, they need followship. Allies are fine, but accomplices are better. They need our hands, our muscle, our toil. Ask for direction, then put yourself in the way. They may need your status or skin color as a shield, not a sword.

It’s also important to remember that those doing this work are not looking to make their cause or tactics more palatable to a broader group of people. They’ve had the “what if” or “what about” discussions before you got there. Dilution of a solution might create more volume, but it reduces the substance.

You may feel uncomfortable. You may feel a loss of status or prestige because doing the right thing doesn’t always feel good. Doing this work on behalf of others may bring to light things about you or people you’re close to that you would have preferred to keep in the darkness.

The good news is short-term loss will become long-term gains over time – for you and everyone else.

If after looking high and low you discover what needs to be created doesn’t exist, bring it into the world. Otherwise, line up with those who are already standing there.

None of this is easy. You’ll make mistakes. Mine usually come from a tendency to want to fix things as quickly as possible, to want to speak first so as to fill a vacuum of uncertainty rather than listen and sit with the discomfort of not knowing. Or to emphasize the theoretical over the lived experience of someone else. When this happens, it helps to be quick with an apology and a description of how you’ll act differently next time.

Right now, we’re rightly obsessed with getting “back to normal.” But what if we thought about “the unusual” instead? It might look like something that’s more well-balanced than what we had before.

That’s how we make things better.

Why I delete my tweets

Communities, Internet, Media, Race, , ,

In the wake of James Gunn’s dismissal as director of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 due to some offensive tweets in his past, director Rian Johnson and political commentator Glenn Greenwald both have deleted tens of thousands of their past tweets.

I’m not here to litigate Disney’s decision to fire a Gunn (sorry), deconstruct why he became a target of a right-wing troll or defend what he said (much of it is indefensible in any context).

But as HuffPost points out and Johnson/Greenwald’s actions demonstrate, Gunn won’t be the last well-known person targeted by people with suspect motives. Even those who aren’t bold-faced names could find themselves in a similar situation when they apply for a new job meet a new acquaintance or simply change their point of view. And it should go without saying, but this type of targeting has been happening to women and people of color for years.

With all this in mind, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to explain why I decided last year to I delete everything I tweeted from 2007 through 2013.

Here’s why:

What’s a tweet?

What’s Twitter for? Does that answer change as it scales? Is it for broadcast or narrowcast? Video or text? Everything and nothing?

The company itself has long struggled to answer these question and create a business model to match. The answer today will be different in six months as new features fundamentally change it. There is no agreed-upon use, style guide or set of standards for Twitter. Some people or organizations apply journalistic ethics to their work there. Others use it for comedy or as a press release distributor.There are governments and the governed. Then there are micro-communities like Weird Twitter or Black Twitter. Some people speak to thousands or millions of people they’ve never met with each tweet. Some speak to tens or a hundred people they’ve known for years.

The line between public figures and private individuals was blurred a long time ago (thanks, Mark!) but we’re all using the same tools. How can we develop a set of rules or guidelines for their use when the experience is always in flux with a user base of broadly differing knowledge and experiences and make it open to new users, too?

Because of all this, Twitter of 2007, 2008 or even 2010 or 2012 is fundamentally different from the Twitter of 2018, specifically in the way media organizations mine it for #content.

We’re all in this together, unfortunately

Feeding this frenzy is what some commentators have called “context collapse” – the removal of a tweet, comment or post from its surrounding discussion, leaving it open to a different interpretation – and what is derisively referred to as the content industrial complex. 

In 2014, The New Yorker compared this – while discussing the emerging problem of context collapse in relation to a tweet from The Colbert Report – to “delivering a punch line without its setup.” 

The problem with calling this “context collapse” in this …er, context is the term already has a specific meaning when it comes to digital communities. Nicholas Carr defined “context collapse” as “a sociological term of art that describes the way social media tend to erase the boundaries that once defined people’s social lives.”

Whatever definition you apply to context collapse is part of the problem here whether we’re discussing presidents or private citizens. There’s no clear agreement on the rules of engagement though Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic uses the term “conversation smoosh” to describe the Colbertian type of context collapse and that’s about as good as anything.

Then there’s the problem of how tweets and the collapse of media business models have created a lower standard for newsworthiness. Shrinking newsrooms and “doing more with less” have meant that tweets are now the coal shoveled into the boilers of content management systems.

Congratulations, you’re the news

It was a safe bet that a 2010 tweet of yours would not be picked up by, say, Buzzfeed or a Gawker site then copy/pasted by countless other digital publishers and later broadcast on your local 10pm news show. The watershed moment for “someone said a thing!” mass media content was probably Valleywag tying Justine Sacco to a digital whipping post at the end of 2013.

Similar to the race to the bottom that occurred when local news sites found gold in mining Anna Nicole Smith’s death for #content, the Sacco incident proved you could easily create a piece of “Twitter reacts!” #content from a set of related posts on a topic and get people to read it even if you hadn’t added anything new. “It exists and now you have an emotion” is reason enough. “Julia Roberts joins Instagram” might be the worst, most recent example of this.

Like most technological advancements, the discussion of an ethical, professional or legislative approach lags far behind. We should probably call this The Jeff Goldblum Rule.

Should a person’s professional or professional background act as a guide for how we use their content in mass media? I dunno, it’s complicated. I’ll use myself as an example.

I worked in news/journalism/blogging/commentary in a professional capacity from 2004 to 2016. I’m not a journalist now, but I’m the editorial director of a small media company, but one that’s owned and operated by a marketing agency and counts a museum as a partner. I’m also a board member at a non-profit organization with a 70-year-plus history in my community, a board member of a four-year-old activist group in that same community and a host of a storytelling series co-produced by an arts organization.

Does that make me a journalist, a marketer, a community leader or an activist?  Yes?

Even though it’s not currently my job/career right now, I’ve tried to use the standards of journalism and informed commentary to guide the things I say on Twitter and this blog even when they’re grounded in my work as a community member or activist. The fact that 11,000+ people follow me on Twitter means I have a greater responsibility for accuracy and truth than someone with 100.

Have I been consistent in this? No, because sometimes it would make me less effective in whatever role I am in at the time. And, quite frankly, sometimes I’ve fired off a tweet that I should have thought the better of at the time.

I think about this stuff quite a bit and try to understand the implications around it all. Still, I was surprised when one of my tweets was published as a roundup of Twitter conversation about ABC7’s 2013 New Year’s Eve coverage by the city’s most prominent media critic. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. I realized I couldn’t publish anything on Twitter that I wouldn’t say in a roomful of people or to the face of the person mentioned in that tweet. Again, I’ve failed to meet this standard from time to time.

Is this approach right? Wrong? I don’t know, honestly.

So it’s why I deleted seven years of tweets.

Why I deleted my tweets

From Twitter’s founding in 2006 to roughly 2012, tweets spoke to a relatively small number of people, many of whom were tech or media types. From 2012 to 2014, things changed dramatically. Meyer’s Atlantic article is a great exploration of this. Media changed. Conversation smoosh happened. Everyone became a “personal brand.”

I started tweeting in 2007. I was in my early 30s. I wasn’t a kid. But last year, I began a fool’s errand of trying to manually delete tweets I felt were dumb, overly reliant on swear words or otherwise inconsistent with my current worldview. After a couple days, I gave up. It was like trying to separate dirt from pepper. So I paid $12 to use TweetDeleter to get rid of everything I tweeted from 2007 through 2013 feeling confident that by 2014 I’d understood that anything I tweeted might end up in a news story with wide reach. (It happens.) I’ve also occasionally deleted recent replies to people which, devoid of context, might be read in opposition to their actual meaning.

I’m not saying everyone should do the same. I will say in the several months since I deleted all those tweets, I haven’t missed any of them or felt as if I could still have access to that work. So if you’re worried about that, don’t be. (I feel much differently about the loss of stuff I’ve written at previous employers thanks to website redesigns. Save your work locally, kids!)

How we move forward

Some have bathed in the delicious irony that Greenwald has apparently called people who delete tweets “cowards.” I understand that impulse, but expecting everyone to think of their tweets as the Library of Congress Archives misses where we are right now and where we’ve been.

We shouldn’t immediately think that someone who deletes their tweets has something to hide. We should consider that maybe they’re trying to become a better person and remove any harm they’ve committed. We should also consider that structures of misogyny and whiteness mean that women, people of color and others in oppressed populations are more likely to be ostracized for their expressions of thought because they challenge those structures. Deletion may be a means of safety and protection.

Moreover, we have to talk about moving conversation in the social space from “calling out” to “calling in.” We have to allow for people to experience emotional and intellectual growth and not judge them solely on their worst tweet. Confrontation, yes, but without a subsequent requirement for erasure.

With respect to my fellow white men, we also need to be ready to speak up and defend women and people of color who articulate something outside of what we perceive to be “the norm” and make space for conversations that don’t involve us, aren’t meant for us and don’t need our approval or contributions.

We’re getting there. Societal conversation has become much more intersectional than it’s ever been. There’s a deeper understanding of how racist and sexist institutions have driven our understanding of the world. Eyes have been opened. Hearts and minds have been changed. We have to assume a person in 2007 was fundamentally different than who they are in 2018. I know I am.

Personally, I’ve lost my appetite for Twitter fights. Not every @ is delivered in good faith. I’ve tried to spend less time being concerned that “someone is wrong on the Internet.” (My wife is thrilled.)

None of this should be read as a defense of truly bad behavior, actions or statements or arguing Twitter become a free-for-all. But we have to be able to reckon with the difference between, say, James Gunn saying stupid, deliberately provocative things about groups of people back in 2010 and Roseanne or Alex Jones singling out a specific person.

In the meantime, with context collapse and conversation smoosh still very much guiding how we view people and conversations, the “delete tweet” button is there for a reason.

UPDATE – NOVEMBER 2018: Since I first published this four months ago, I’ve deleted everything I’ve tweeted since October of 2018. It was something I’d meant to do for a while, but never got around to. I even tried to delete my likes using the same Tweetdeleter service. For some reason, it didn’t work. Then I tried to run a script I found online, but this had some unintended consequences.

Ugggggh. And then I was getting tweets and DMs from people wondering what was up. I stopped running the script because blowing up people’s phones wasn’t worth it. Apparently the only way to unlike old tweets is to do it manually. I have…12,000 or so. So that’ll be fun.

This feels like another example of how tech platforms don’t allow you to truly own your data, but someone else can write about that.

A guide to yesterday’s Chicago protests on the Dan Ryan – for people who are new to all this (and trolls)

Chicago, Communities, Media, Politics, Race, ,

The_Dan_Ryan_Expressway_Westbound_near_the_I-55_exit

I spent most of yesterday watching reactions to the shutdown of the Dan Ryan to protest violence in Chicago.

Some of the reactions were genuine – people trying to come to a better understanding of why protestors chose this tactic and why it’s effective.

Some of them were super troll-y.

This is for both groups.

What’s the point of disrupting traffic on the Dan Ryan? Most of the people affected aren’t the ones causing the violence.

One of the biggest problems with addressing violence in Chicago is that it is seen as a problem isolated to a particular area and only affecting certain people and neighborhoods. Yesterday’s protest was like throwing a stone in a pond and causing ripple effects.

If you ended up talking about this protest and the issues surrounding it this weekend, that was the point of the protest. Shutting down the Dan Ryan makes that possible in ways other tactics don’t.

Without calling more people into this fight, the problem doesn’t get solved. Without more pressure on the mayor, the governor, the City Council, it doesn’t get solved. Without a broad-based coalition of people from around the metro area who demand solutions, it doesn’t get solved. Shutting down the Dan Ryan made the problem impossible to ignore.

It was also about forcing people who access Chicago via the Dan Ryan to see parts of the city they otherwise are able to avoid. If you wanted to access the city via I-57, you got diverted to 95th or 103rd Street. You’d have to take State Street or Vincennes or any of the other streets that run parallel to the Dan Ryan to get into the city. You’d have to see the people, the businesses and neighborhoods that make up the South Side – all the places that are largely invisible if you’re taking the Dan Ryan.

At a minimum, this makes the problem more present, less a thing you hear about and more a thing that exists in real ways.

Why don’t they disrupt the spots where the drug dealers / gang members hang out?

People do this all the time. This article is from 2016, but trust me this kind of thing happens out of the reach of TV cameras and reporters frequently.

In fact, Father Pfleger himself leads marches like this every Friday night. His church, St. Sabina, also has an ongoing violence intervention program.

Bringing more attention to the people doing this work is also what the protest was about, not to mention talking about issues like low wages, schools, jobs, etc.

So why don’t they protest in front of the mayor/governor/Mike Madigan’s house?

People do protest in front of the mayor’s house. Often enough that it doesn’t create the kind of disruption or visibility that something like this did. But honestly, this is like asking why civil rights protestors walked from Selma to Montgomery or blocked the Edmund Pettus Bridge. There’s a tendency with protests to see them as either/or rather than “yes, and…”

This is just politics! It’s just a publicity stunt.

Yes. You’ve captured the exact reason why protests happen: to publicize issues and put pressure on political decision makers.

But I’ll agree with you on one point: The posturing by the mayor and the governor yesterday was not particularly insightful or helpful. Especially when you consider the mayor and the governor have both tried to crush unions and teachers, two groups that provide economic and educational health to the affected communities.

This just creates a lot of chaos for law enforcement.

It definitely requires a significant deployment of resources. I don’t have the exact numbers, but I’ll bet it’s roughly equal to the time we closed down Michigan Avenue and most of downtown when the Blackhawks won.

We close streets, disrupt traffic and re-deploy law enforcement officers all the time for street fests, parades, etc. It affects people who aren’t participating in those events, too. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have those things. We should! But again it’s “yes, and…”

It’s a question of what we prioritize.

Also, you might have missed Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson marching arm-in-arm with Father Pfleger down the Dan Ryan. Was this more politics? Maybe. But most folks think better relations between the community and law enforcement are what’s needed here. So if this brought those groups together in a way that showed unity? That’s probably helpful.

Do you think people really don’t know about violence in Chicago?

I think most people hear about Chicago violence, but they don’t know much about it.

Do they hear it exists? Sure. Do they know why it happens? The real root causes of it and not just the stuff Hannity and his ilk spout? I don’t know.

Do they know the ways we fought gangs and dismantled public housing led to a less centralized, more violent gang problem?

Do they know we closed down mental health clinics in our neighborhoods which meant it was more likely that we are trying to treat medical issues as law enforcement problems? And that Illinois’s ongoing budget issues closed even more?

Do they know we closed 40+ schools in black and brown neighborhoods which meant their education was disrupted or kids had to cross gang boundaries? Do they know you end up gang-affiliated not by choice but by location?

Do they know the manufacturing and industrial jobs that were a large part of the South Side haven’t been replaced and that people there are (ahem) economically insecure?

People who live in this city – anywhere, from the North Side to the South Side to downtown and elsewhere – have a part to play. In part because resources to deal with the issue often flow to what demographer Rob Paral calls “the zone of affluence” which stretches from downtown to as far north as Lakeview and parts beyond. If you live in the suburbs, you benefit from the metro area being an economic powerhouse, not to mention the times you come into the city to enjoy its attractions and culture. Yesterday’s protest was about reaching you, too, and asking for your help.

I also find it interesting that some of the same people who say “What about Chicago?” whenever there’s a protest over a mass shooting at a school, church, movie theater, concert, etc. – to suggest no one is protesting over the violence here – are the same ones who are quick to decry this effort as well.

In order for all of us to be better educated on this topic, we need to seek out media, not just expect that it will reach us. More often than not, it’s in seeking out books, magazines and podcasts over TV, daily news and tweets.

It’s how we will know about Chicago violence and not just hear about it.

Why don’t these protestors spend their time calling for mandatory minimums or truth in sentencing laws?

Increasing the carceral state is a further drain on an already financially taxed system. Not to mention that mandatory minimums are usually implemented in ways that are racist and unequal. And Illinois already has truth-in-sentencing laws.

But if we’re interested in solutions that do more than warehousing people, we could start with restoring the funding to social service programs that try to interrupt violence in Chicago communities or provide jobs and other community services. Or we could work on re-opening mental health clinics. Or equally fund our schools.

Is a protest really going to solve this problem though?

By itself? No. And not even Fr. Pfleger thinks that.

We came out here to do one thing: to shut it down,” Pfleger said. “We came here to get their attention. Hopefully we got their attention. … Today was the attention-getter, but now comes the action.”

I’m going to put on my marketing hat for a second and suggest protests like this are about bringing in new participants through awareness and education. None of the other options above would have as much impact on awareness as what happened yesterday. It’s also important to talk through these issues and what else is being done to solve the problem so people know where/how they can spend their time and why it’s so vitally important.

Are the issues and their solutions complicated? Very much so. Chicago Tribune reporter Peter Nickeas talked yesterday about how the work that follows is about offering basic help and services to the people most likely to end up touched by violence:

Softball on Monday + Thursday, afternoon basketball, Tuesday night prayer group, twice-monthly tattoo removal, after-school probation programming w/ substance abuse, therapy, life skill classes, little league baseball. And of course, street outreach, violence intervention…they’ve done *tons* of work off the efforts of volunteers alone over the years, they still do. And people donate space, food, etc. But yea, things cost $. Space, vans, insurance, salaries, permits, jerseys and uniforms, etc.

Pete’s article from last year on how this work is being done in Little Village is a must-read on the topic.

So what am I supposed to do? I want to help, but I don’t know where to start.

Continue to ask questions and listen to the answers from people who’ve been doing this work.

For a regular deep dive into these issues, follow the coverage at WBEZ, Chicago Reader, City Bureau, South Side Weekly and Chicago Reporter as they often go beyond a daily news reporting model. This isn’t to say reporters at the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times aren’t ever doing so, but the approach is different. Having said that, the long reads and watchdog reporting from both those papers (like Pete’s article linked above) are worth your time. Again, “yes, and…” not either/or.

Here’s a list of social service agencies that could use your time, talent or treasure. You could also learn more about the places that fly under the radar who are trying to help.

If each of us takes a piece of this, the load becomes a little lighter.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Why are Beverly’s home sales up? Because of the people who live here

Communities, Politics, , , ,

 

Last week in Crain’s Chicago Business there was an article about how home sales in Beverly are on the rise and some of the reasons why. I’ll get into that in a second, but a couple of declarations are in order here.

Neighborhood development – specifically my neighborhood of Beverly/Morgan Park, but also the general concept – is something that’s been on my mind for the last couple years due to volunteer work I’ve been doing. I serve on the board of the Beverly Area Planning Association (BAPA), I’m a board member with the Southwest Chicago Diversity Collaborative (where we’re working on the launch of a spring festival that highlights the need for more bike/pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods) and I work with The Beverly Area Arts Alliance where I produce a live storytelling series called The Frunchroom which tells stories about the South Side that don’t always make the headlines.

Like most volunteer work, there are intrinsic and extrinsic benefits. I love where I live and I want to see great things happen here. I own a house so a good neighborhood means good property values. More art and less racism means my blood pressure stays low. That sort of thing.

But I also see it as part of a larger belief about where neighborhood development should and must come from: a participatory community that has a voice in our neighborhood – and city. It’s the opposite of the typical top-down, politically-driven model Chicago has often embraced.

HOW BEVERLY CREATES COMMUNITY

beverlyartwalk

A couple years ago, I wrote and performed this piece at The Frunchroom. (Say, have you checked out our podcast yet?) In it, I suggested that bars can be a place of true community and an economic driver, particularly those places that elevate artists and writers. It may have been a bit self-serving or even meta considering I was saying it in a bar during the storytelling series I was producing with a group that showcases art in bars but that didn’t make it any less true. I’d witnessed it as over the last few years more young families had moved into Beverly/Morgan Park, attracted by the home values and classic Chicago neighborhood feel.

This week, no less than Crain’s Chicago Business backed up this assertion with data and reporting.

Beverly ended September with a steep increase in home sales for the year to date, according to Crain’s analysis of Midwest Real Estate Data’s sales information. In the first nine months of the year, 185 houses sold in Beverly, an increase of more than 27 percent over the same period in 2016.

[SNIP]

Meanwhile, new arts and social groups and new businesses have “brought a new energy into Beverly” in the past few years, said Francine Benson Garaffo, an @properties agent who has lived in next door Morgan Park for 29 years.

The neighborhood now has two breweries and a meadery (a meadery makes honey drinks, or mead), the three-year-old Beverly Area Arts Alliance, which hosts an early October Art Walk through the neighborhood, and the Frunchroom series of spoken-word performances.

(The Wild Blossom Meadery is near the 91st St. Metra on the border of Beverly and Washington Heights but grew out of a brewing supply store on Western Avenue.)

We have to recognize what a hard turn this was, especially when the Art Walk and Horse Thief Hollow (one of the two breweries mentioned) debuted:

  • There was nothing like them in the neighborhood. While both were warmly embraced, Western Avenue was (and still kinda is) a haven of shot-and-a-beer joints.
  • While there were some art galleries in the neighborhood, most are like the Vanderpoel Art Museum – gems galore, but hidden away, and not something the neighborhood was known for to outsiders.

These changes are due to individuals who envisioned change and put entrepreneurial thinking behind it. It wasn’t thanks to a city or ward office development plan (though such a thing would certainly be welcome and come to think of it why doesn’t that exist?). It was people – many of them volunteers – banding together in common cause who then attracted like-minded folks to follow behind them. Horse Thief begat Open Outcry and The Meadery. The Art Walk begat The Frunchroom. Etc.

You see this spirit of volunteerism-meets-entrepreneurialism in BAPA as well. Though it has only three full-time staff members, it has an army of volunteers, homeowners and local businesses who make it possible to create a year-long slate of events like the Ridge Run, the Beverly Home Tour, Bikes and Brews and more. They’re also not afraid to take on the city and advocate for the neighborhood like in the current campaign to save the Ridge Park fieldhouse after years of neglect.

HOW BEVERLY FOUGHT FOR OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS

schoolsmarch
Parents, students and community members march through the 19th ward to protest Alderman Matt O’Shea and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to close/merge three public schools in 2016.

The Crain’s article also had something interesting to say about public schools in our neighborhood.

Schools were the top draw, Clinton added. “It was important to me that if we’re paying Chicago property taxes, we don’t also have to spend the money to pay for private school. I want a good school paid for with our taxes.” The elementary school that serves their new home, Kellogg, scores a seven out of 10 points on Great Schools.

In a time of upheaval for CPS, it’s worth noting that people are moving to the 19th Ward because of our public schools. The article specifically mentions Kellogg as a reason why this family moved here. And that’s in spite of – not because of – efforts by our alderman and the mayor’s control of CPS.

Because if they had had their way, Kellogg would be closed.

In September of last year, 19th Ward Alderman Matt O’Shea revealed to the public a plan that would close or merge three 19th ward public schools: Keller, Kellogg and Sutherland. This also would have had deleterious effects on black and low-income students and affected two schools (Keller and Kellogg) with the highest CPS ratings.

Due to significant public objection, the alderman dropped this plan, which was supposed to be necessary to provide $40 million dollars to solve overcrowding issues at two other public schools in the Ward: Esmond and Mount Greenwood.

Somehow, even without closing or merging those three schools, the $40 million dollars was found anyway and the plans to build annexes at Esmond and Mt. Greenwood proceeded. Since then, there’s been little public information provided on the status of these plans.

As for Keller, Sutherland and Kellogg:

  • Keller has maintained a 1+ rating for two years running with a slight (0.41%) enrollment increase
  • Kellogg has maintained a 1+ rating for two years running and increased enrollment by 3% this year, bucking both ward and city trends for CPS.
  • Though Sutherland’s enrollment dropped its rating increased to 1 and it recruited a new principal with such a stellar record that the Local School Council voted unanimously to hire her without having to narrow its choice down to a set of finalists.

Like our burgeoning art and microbrewery scenes, this all happened because of people who stood up for the kind of community they wanted to see thrive here. But in the case of our public schools, it required them to stand up against Chicago’s ward/machine politics and literally fight City Hall.

rahmosheaschoolemailSee, back in July of last year, it turned out that Alderman Matt O’Shea was talking to Mayor Emanuel about his schools plan – a month and a half before he talked to any school administrators, LSC members, public school parents or the general public. All this was revealed in the email dump spurred by a FOIA request from the Chicago Tribune and the Better Government Association.

 

BEING THE CHANGE WE WISH TO SEE

19th Ward Parents United in a press conference before a CPS board meeting to speak out against the OShea/Emanuel school closing plan.
19th Ward Parents United in a press conference before a CPS board meeting to speak out against the O’Shea/Emanuel school closing plan.

It’s great to see Beverly’s arts scene, new restaurants and public schools creating an atmosphere where home sales and prices are on the rise. There are two lessons here:

1. If you have a vision for change in your community, you and your friends have the power to make it happen
2. Decisions about our communities – especially our schools – should be participatory, not hatched in secret.

When the 2019 mayoral and aldermanic campaigns roll around, I expect that Alderman O’Shea and Mayor Emanuel will talk about Beverly’s home prices on the rise and take some credit for that. But I wonder if they’ll mention the people who actually made it happen, sometimes in spite of their own wishes.

They’ll talk about how much money they’ve brought to two schools in our community. (I’ll never forget how Mayor Emanuel said the money was coming to Mt. Greenwood “because your alderman was nice to me.”) They’ll hope we’ll forget they tried to damage three schools experiencing growth and success.

I hope we won’t.

Time to hit the reset button on the 19th ward school closing/restructuring plan

Communities, Politics,

kellogg

If you don’t live in the 19th ward of Chicago, you might not know there’s a plan to close and restructure some of the schools in our neighborhood in an effort to solve overcrowding at another. The current plan would close a high-performing school, is short on details of how any schools would benefit and is being pushed through without significant community input.

I wrote an op-ed about it for the The Beverly Review but in the interest of it finding the widest possible audience, I’m also posting it publicly here.

—

I am a resident of Morgan Park and a board member of the Southwest Chicago Diversity Collaborative, a group dedicated to preserving diversity within Beverly, Morgan Park and Mt. Greenwood.

The discussion about 19th Ward Ald. Matt O’Shea’s plan to restructure or close public schools in the 19th Ward has dominated local news, Facebook groups and meeting places—and rightly so.

Strong, diverse, neighborhood schools are the backbone of great communities; they support larger initiatives around housing, safety and business development. We have high-performing schools here.

Our ward is not in a crisis. However, it’s clear we need to do more to offer quality education for all.

Through a series of public meetings, many residents voiced concerns about overcrowded schools, inaccurate data and implications for the diversity of our neighborhood. There has been significant discord, but most agree that while elementary schools like Mt. Greenwood and Esmond appear overcrowded or in need of repairs, the plan to close Kellogg Elementary School (a 1+ school), overcrowd Sutherland Elementary School and move Keller Regional Gifted Center is not the right solution.

Too many questions remain unanswered, and the heated discussion threatens to divide our ward into competing interests. We need to come together to serve our children’s educational needs.

It’s time to hit the reset button on this discussion. While O’Shea deserves credit for an attempt to fix a looming problem, this issue is too important to not have members of the community crafting a solution.

A task force of school administrators, local school council members and community representatives should work with the alderman to find an equitable solution that solves our schools’ resource issues while minimizing the disruption to our students and preserving the hard-won diversity that makes our community great.

In addition, our community needs more transparency around the data used to determine whether our public schools are underutilized, overcrowded or experiencing declining enrollment. Using competing data sets from the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) or U.S. Census clouds the issue.

One of the task force’s first goals should be to agree upon the best set of numbers to guide its work and make these figures easily available throughout public discussion. Enrollment audits of all schools should also be completed.

Time is critical. State law mandates that CPS release an annual set of draft guidelines on Oct. 1 to guide any school co-locations, boundary modifications or changes in access to high-quality education. A 21-day community feedback process follows the draft’s release. CPS then issues a final set of guidelines on Dec. 1.

For me, this discussion has been a struggle. On one hand, I have a responsibility to support our neighborhood schools as a parent and a resident of this community. On the other, my child attends Catholic school because my family is one of many in our area who seek a faith-centered education. I am sure others have experienced similar feelings and wonder how best to support our neighbors. These are personal decisions, guided by many factors.

While the public school communities most affected by this decision should take the lead on the task force, it is essential that all residents of the 19th Ward make themselves aware of the issues at stake and participate in the discussion. Regardless of your affiliation, the strength of our public neighborhood schools has a direct correlation to the economic vitality of our community and requires all of us to be a part of the solution.

Despite an effort to provide money and resources to Esmond Elementary School, this plan would close Kellogg—a high-performing school—and therefore reduce access for students of color within school boundaries and outside of them. It’s important for us to note that policies adversely affecting people of color are not always intentionally motivated by racism. Regardless, we should not ignore the potential outcomes of this current plan.

Moreover, an Options for Knowledge program that draws a small number of youths from outside of the school boundaries—but often still within our ward—and provides a high level of education to those who might not otherwise receive it does not disqualify that school from being a neighborhood school. Many of us are raising families in this community because of its diversity, and it’s important to us to preserve it, including the educational opportunities it provides.

It’s clear this plan—however well-intentioned—has unintended consequences that we must avoid. Even parents whose schools stand to benefit the most have concerns.

A multi-part solution is required to solve myriad problems within our public schools while keeping high-performing ones available to those seeking them. We are all the 19th Ward. Together we can find a solution that best serves the children in our schools.

However, more community participation, data transparency and honest discussion must be had before we do.

Scott Smith

The South Side is a myth: Tuesday Funk, July 5th, 2016

Chicago, Communities, Politics, , ,

16thstreettower

With The Frunchroom taking up most of my live lit energy in the last year, I didn’t have as much time as I liked to do live readings. I’m trying to get back into the habit and reading at Tuesday Funk earlier this summer was a good way to do it.

This idea was kicking around in the back of my brain for a while. It felt appropriate for this series since it’s held in a Far North Side neighborhood that was not only adjacent to some of the issues discussed but also more likely to have an audience that was open to hearing it.

A couple notes: There are a couple of time-specific references in this piece, so know that I’m speaking of earlier this summer, not now. I changed a couple instances of “there” to “here.”

And if you like watching and listening to things rather than reading them, scroll to the bottom of this post to watch the video.

—

There are a handful of books I recommend to people who want to understand Chicago. And, yes, I’m starting this piece off with a reading list but, look, if you don’t like anything else I have to say at least I’ve given you some options for something better. Think of it like Amazon’s recommendation list in reverse. “People who also disliked this reader at Tuesday Funk bought the following…”

Anyway, if you want to understand Chicago politics start with American Pharoah, Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor’s biography of Richard J. Daley and Fire on the Prairie, Gary Rivlin’s book about Harold Washington. If you want to know more about the sectarian, tribal mix of people who call themselves Chicagoans you can’t do much better than Studs Terkel’s Division Street: America. And if you want to understand Chicago’s influence and status as an innovator in everything from architecture to television to literature, read The Third Coast by Thomas Dyja.

Those four books are a great place to start, but they mostly tell you about the past. Natalie Y. Moore’s book The South Side, released just this year, is required reading about Chicago because it tells you about our present and updates the past that Cohen, Taylor, Rivlin, Dyja and Studs all explore.

What’s so essential about Moore’s book is how it argues against myth through a mix of facts and memoir. Against a historical context, Moore explains her own experiences with segregation, the real estate crisis, gun violence, political movements, the decline of the middle class – black and otherwise – and Chicago as the epicenter of social change, good and bad. Moore’s life experience fills in the gaps between headlines and stereotypes. Within chapters like “Notes from a Black Gentrifier,” “Kale Is The New Collard” and “We Are Not Chiraq” lives the nuance of stories often untold.

It’s the kind of nuance that’s tough to fit into a headline, especially headlines about the South Side. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the South Side defies easy explanations.

***

The other day I was talking with these two guys named Max Grinnell and Bill Savage. Max is a writer, professor and University of Chicago graduate. Bill’s a professor, too, as well as a renowned Chicago historian, writer/editor and former bartender. We were talking at that well-known gathering spot for gadflies, loudmouths and public intellectuals called Twitter.

Anyway, about a week ago, Max mentioned his former Hyde Park residency and noted, in an aside, “to some, that’s not the ‘real’ South Side.” Bill replied that “people who say Hyde Park is not the South Side promote a narrow view of the South Side they otherwise despise.”

They’re both correct though I’m not sure such a view is limited to those on any particular side of Chicago. For some who’ve never ventured south of Roosevelt, there’s a desire to convince themselves there is good reason never to have done so, to paint the South Side with the broadest brush possible or tell themselves that Hyde Park has something other South Side neighborhoods do not – like museums or a university or lakefront.

For some who live there, this reaction is something akin to an internal pathology borne of anger: surviving a lack for jobs and feeling overwhelmed by the violence that’s a part of some areas becomes a badge of honor others won’t be allowed to claim.

To make it very clear, the South Side contains multitudes.

31st Street Beach is great if you love water and clean beaches, but hate crowds.

For sheer beauty, heading south on Lake Shore Drive beats the drive north any day, especially if you end up at Promontory Point and walk around.

Maria’s in Bridgeport is one of the city’s great bars.

Vito and Nick’s in Ashburn serves one of the best thin-crust, tavern-style pizzas.

Lem’s in Chatham is barbecue, period, end of sentence.

You can tour a damn submarine at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Pullman contains the city’s only national monument and you can get one of the best burgers and ice cream cones in Chicago at Top Notch Burgers on 95th Street and Rainbow Cone on Western and 91st, which are within five minutes of each other in Beverly.

And that’s just the stuff that Channel 11 will cover. Nevermind the stuff only locals know and oh by the way there’s going to be a presidential library down here in a few years so go now and beat the crowds.

But denying the real South Side also includes Hyde Park or, say, Beverly depends on the tired idea that there are nice neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods – that the problems that plague our city stop at boundaries that are a bigger concern for real estate agents than criminals. It also means denying the nuance within neighborhoods, the prosperity that often lives close to danger.

I live in Morgan Park which is about as far on the southwest side as you can live and still be in Chicago. On the whole, it’s pretty nice with some areas you might diplomatically call “dicey.”

Last week, four people, including a pregnant woman were shot and wounded in Morgan Park.

But the day after that I walked block after block, taking pictures of the historic bungalows, Queen Anne homes and old mansions that populate the neighborhood, blocks that contain more than a few Chicago landmarks and designs by Frank Lloyd Wright. The sun was out.

Three days ago, a man was shot in Morgan Park by the father of his ex-girlfriend. This happened roughly a mile from my tree-lined street with its well-maintained lawns, some professionally so.

I’m barely a block from a park which holds an easter egg hunt every year. It was on this street – my street – two years ago that a couple of guys robbed me at gunpoint two doors down from my house. When a lawyer for one of the guys showed up in my driveway with a subpoena, the first words out of his mouth were “This is a beautiful street. I can’t believe you got robbed here!”

Yeah, me neither.

I could tell you about the pro-am cycling event Morgan Park will host in a little over a week, the annual art walk in October or the live lit series much like this one that I host once a quarter.

I could tell you about all that in an effort to convince you that even within a particular neighborhood nothing is all good or all bad or remind you of the times people have been shot in tourist districts downtown or what we’d call a riot in one neighborhood is called a post-game celebration in another but sometimes it feels like I’m belaboring the point, which is this:

Myths are stories we tell ourselves to explain things that seem far away, things we don’t understand. For a lot of people, the South Side is a myth.

Are there very real problems of poverty and violence in some parts of the South Side? Yes. Let me state unequivocally that there are people living in some places here who would leave if they could escape it. But those blocks – and they are blocks not neighborhoods – are no more or less representative of the entire South Side than Edegwater, Rogers Park, Lincoln Park, Lakeview or Wicker Park are completely representative of the North Side.

That’s what’s always struck me: how often problematic areas on the North Side are referred to by their neighborhoods, while shootings are often said to be happening on the South Side. When good things are happening on the South Side, we often speak of them as exceptions or grade them on a curve. Residents of visitors describing a restaurant or bar as “pretty good for the South Side” is literally why we can’t have nice things.

***

Natalie Moore’s book The South Side is a welcome corrective after years of reporting that has focused on the negative of that part of the city. It doesn’t offer easy explanations. Instead, it embraces the complexity of its subject and describes how policy becomes personal. At some point, if you want to get people to stop believing in myths, you have to replace them with your own stories based in science, fact and experience.

While few of us are ever going to write our own book on the complex parts of Chicago we love, we’re all capable of creating the culture we want. Even if it takes a bit of nuance.

METX 204 at 16th Street Tower image by vixla via Creative Commons license.

Rainbow Cone is Chicago’s original family dynasty

Chicago, Communities, Uncategorized, , ,

rainbowcone1

The piece below is something I wrote for a now-abandoned project about unique Chicago places. With Rainbow Cone‘s grand opening this weekend and the store celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, I thought it was right to publish it now.

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If there was any justice in the world, the family name most closely associated with the greatness of Chicago would not be The Daleys.

It would be The Sapps.

Sure, the Daleys built O’Hare, Millennium Park and several other monuments to Chicago’s spirit of ingenuity triumphing over reason. But in 1926, when Old Man Daley was still finding his way around Bridgeport, Joseph Sapp and his wife Katherine built Original Rainbow Cone, a small store at 92nd Street and South Western Avenue that sold a unique, five-flavor ice cream treat of the same name. Some 88 years later, the store is in roughly the same location as when it opened and a Rainbow Cone remains one of the finest desserts known to man, woman or child.

The Rainbow Cone is a both an engineering marvel and a kid’s fantasy come true. Literally. The story goes that the New York-born Sapp grew up as an orphan on an Ohio work farm and had few indulgences, save for the times he could save up enough money for ice cream. At the time, he had two choices: chocolate and vanilla. Rather than a single serving of one or the other, Sapp envisioned a carnival of flavors perched on his cone. As an adult, he brought this vision to life:

Orange Sherbet.
Pistachio.
Palmer House.
Strawberry.
Chocolate.

That’s what it looks like, top to bottom. Five layers of ice cream, which could fairly be called slabs. They are not scoops. In a city once known as Hog Butcher to the World, this seems right. It also seems right that Chicago’s most famous ice cream should be built one level at a time like the skyscrapers the city invented. The slender cone below never seems quite up to the task of supporting it all, but it perseveres.

The Palmer House flavor always intrigued me: Venetian vanilla with cherries and walnuts. For a long time, I assumed it was invented, like the chocolate fudge brownie, by the legendary Chicago hotel of the same name. According to Joseph’s granddaughter Lynn, who has run Rainbow Cone since the 1980s, a New York dairy had a vanilla-and-cherries flavor called Palmer. Joseph added walnuts to the ice cream and “House” in honor of the hotel; he and his wife were equally savvy about marketing and making ice cream.

Once assembled, the ice cream often forms the shape of a scalene triangle, the orange sherbet layer valiantly holding it together over the top. It is possible to order a small Rainbow Cone from the menu but even then its size recalls a slice of Chicago’s famed deep-dish pizza. Lynn says Joseph’s original recipe was designed to be chock full of as much nutrition as possible – mainly from the fruits and nuts. His motto then was “Ice cream is good food. Eat ice cream daily.”

It begins melting immediately, as fleeting as a Chicago summer. And it’s delicious. If I were a proper food critic, I might be able to describe why it works so well or contrast the way it’s made with similar frozen treats. All I can tell you is it tastes like roller coasters and a run through the sprinkler and staying at the park until 9 p.m. and all the joys afforded by the warmth of the sun.

For those with an allergy, there’s a nut-free version that I understand is just as good. You can also get rainbow ice cream cakes and sundaes with various other flavors. I know this because it’s on the menu, but I’ve never had any of it. You can also get quarts of Rainbow Cone through December. I never have. The scarcity is part of the anticipation. What’s the fun in wanting something you can have anytime?

The ice cream aside, it’s important to understand why opening Rainbow Cone was sort of a crazy thing to do though perhaps no more or less crazy than raising up the buildings of downtown Chicago some ten feet through the use of jackscrews so an underground sewage system could be built. (Look it up.)

It gets cold in Chicago. Very cold. For months. So the window of opportunity for convincing people to leave their warm houses and buy something that will make them colder is a small one. Rainbow Cone closes for the season at the beginning of November and opens again in early March, which is so much wishful thinking. This year, I went to Rainbow Cone two weeks after it opened and took a picture of the cone piled high with multi-colored ice cream, my hand wrapped triumphantly around it. “Suck it, winter,” read the caption when I posted it to social media. Nevermind you can see a good foot-and-a-half of snow on the ground in the background of the picture. I think it eventually melted in April.

Also, Rainbow Cone was built in what is now the vibrant neighborhood of Beverly on the Far South Side of Chicago. But back in 1926, that area of the city was still developing and known for the number of cemeteries there. According to Lynn, Joseph realized there was a market in the relatives of those dearly departed who would come to visit them. On their way back into the city, they’d need something to lift their spirits and they’d stop at Rainbow Cone. Even now, Sundays remain Rainbow Cone’s busiest day.

The unique two-story design of the Rainbow Cone store is mean to evoke the fluffy ice cream it serves. Pepto-Bismol pink stucco with orange Spanish-style roof tiles. The doorway trimmed in rainbow-colored bricks. A towering Rainbow Cone on the roof. Neon letters offering “Cakes For Any Occasion.” It stands just across the street from the original location, on the border of Chicago and the village of Evergreen Park. The suburb recently removed acres of trees and green space to build big box stores and a gas station. It is as if Rainbow Cone stands at the entrance of the city, a guardian meant to preserve Chicago’s past.

Rainbow Cone remains a family business. Joseph’s son Bob and his wife Jean ran it in the 1960s and 70s and their daughter Lynn took it over from them. Outlasting the imitators (it’s not called Original Rainbow Cone for nothing), it’s been served up at Taste of Chicago for the last 27 years and functioned as the city’s culinary ambassador at events in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.

Rainbow Cone has been a part of South Side childhoods for decades. The ice cream is certainly delicious. But I go back there several times a summer as a reminder of what you can do when you leave behind all the reasons why you shouldn’t do something and think about what you dreamed of making as a kid. Chicago has always given me a place to do that.

I’m sure the Daleys would say the same.

Pushing back on racism: The Beverly Review, 12.29.15

Communities, Politics, Race, , ,
integration
Screenshot from WBEZ’s Curious City report on Beverly’s 1970s integration efforts. This was from a presentation called “Beverly Now.”

Yesterday I experienced an afternoon of celebration, reflection and conversation at St. Barnabas Church, where I’m a parishioner. The event was “Following Big Shoes – What Is Ours Yet To Do?” It focused on the past, present and future of the civil rights movement. Specifically, we discussed the work that needs to be done for civil rights in Chicago, now, to eradicate the scourge of gun violence in this city. There was passion and the comfort of shared mission.

The event was part of the Thou Shalt Not Murder campaign, led by a group of South Side churches and pastors leading up to a day without murder or shootings: March 27th, Easter Sunday. Please visit the website, read about the upcoming events and consider adding your voice to those who call for a day without murder in this city.

I will write more about this campaign later, but yesterday’s conversation (and specifically the line “what is ours left to do”) reminded me of an op-ed I wrote that originally ran in our neighborhood paper, The Beverly Review, during the last week of 2015. Our neighborhood is one of the few in Chicago that has an integrated population, but it didn’t come without a fight. The events in this country of the last year proved that the fight against racism isn’t over, nor is it enough for neighborhoods like mine to rest on its laurels. This column is specifically about the neighborhood of Beverly/Morgan Park, but likely has some relevance for you no matter where you live.

In all honesty, this column is a lot more gentle than anything I’d normally publish here. It’s absent the anger I feel about the incidents that led to it. And I purposely sidestepped calling out the neighborhood Facebook groups that are rife with stereotypes and some of the worst things I’ve read about anyone. But I wasn’t trying to reach them; I’m trying to reach those who disagree but feel cowed into silence by the hate they see. It’s those whose voices we need the most: the ones who hadn’t ever thought they can play a role in pushing back.

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As winter takes hold and the year begins to draw to a close, I’ve been thinking about the past year and taking an inventory of my life in the past twelve months – work and home, good and bad, what I’ve done and what I’ve left undone.

When I’m thinking about the past year’s accomplishments and next year’s priorities, I often find myself thinking in terms of a checklist: which tasks are one-time events that can be forgotten once they’re done and which ones are ongoing tasks that need regular effort?

I’ve thought about this in terms of our neighborhood, too, and how most things we think of as one-and-done really ought to be ongoing matters that always get our attention.

All of which brings me around to matters of diversity and race in our area.

Our community is one of the few in the highly segregated city of Chicago that can claim a measure of racial integration. According to the 2010 census, Beverly’s population is 65% white, 32% black, 3% Hispanic. Morgan Park is 66% black, 29% white, 3% Hispanic. But this mix did not happen naturally.

The racial makeup of Beverly changed only after hard work, court fights and the bravery of those who persevered in the face of stiff opposition. A report last year by WBEZ’s Curious City program detailed this change. Beverly was 99% white in 1970. Members of the Beverly Area Planning Association pushed (and sued) realtors to avoid racially-motivated steering while also speaking to parishes and neighbors about the importance and benefits of an integrated community. A few brave black families began to move here. In the next ten years, the black population in Beverly would grow to 14%.

All of this gives our neighborhood a unique history. But what about our future? Or our present?

Our community’s current racial makeup may lead some of us to think that our efforts at integration can be checked off the list. Yet over the past couple years, it’s distressed me that our neighborhood has too often made local and even national headlines for incidents of racism. Just like in the 1970s, it is not a problem that will go away on its own without the help of people who live here. It will require bravery, honesty and a commitment from those with power.

Of course, our neighborhood is not alone in this struggle. As this country becomes more diverse, it is re-examining its own racial past and asking what work still needs to be done. While we’ve come far as a nation, we have a ways to go before we remove all the structural, economic and cultural barriers that prevent us from living up to the ideals of liberty and justice for all.

We can do this here. And we can do this now.

As with most things, stepping outside of our own experiences is the first step. Our community is tight-knit, which is wonderful. But sometimes it prevents us from seeing beyond what’s happening on our block, in our parish or within our immediate neighborhood. Rather than allow suspicions to form around those whom are unfamiliar, let’s agree to try and get to know each other better instead.

This work continues by not being silent when confronted with racism. We don’t need to be consumed by the hate and anger of others. The simple act of saying “I disagree and that doesn’t reflect my views” in response says far more than silence, which can, too often, be read as agreement.

When something happens to one group in this community, let’s agree that it affects all of us. If a racial incident occurs, we can express our concern and our willingness to help to our alderman Matt O’Shea, the police in the 22nd district, BAPA, our churches, our schools and any other organized group in this community capable of bringing people together in common cause. Moreover, groups like Unity in Diversity, Southsiders for Peace and the Southwest Chicago Diversity Collaborative all operate within this area and are interested in fighting racism and increasing diversity.

Forty years from now, will the next generation read about this neighborhood and say that we were the ones who continued the diversity work of those that came before us? We will make mistakes and it will be messy. But when it comes to pushing back on racism, it’s not enough to have good intentions; it has to be followed by good works.

It’s an ongoing effort, but it’s worth every bit of our attention.