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.

Our inspiration to vote should come from a cause, not a candidate

Politics

Ta-Nehisi Coates said this thing on Ezra Klein’s podcast back in June that I haven’t stopped thinking about as it relates to the 2020 election:

I say this as somebody who’s been very openly critical of Biden. 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. So I can loudly say all the things Joe Biden was wrong on and not feel guilt about voting for him. Me casting a presidential vote is not the totality of my political action within a society.

I’m not sure how the “sacred ritual” emerged. You could argue it got its start in the idolatry of the Kennedy era then inflamed by the rough-and-tumble politics of 1968 when what should have been a boring matter of intra-party business became a literal Democratic street fight.

Perhaps it was borne from the way media coverage of presidential campaigns evolved since 1984. Start with a base of What It Takes hero worship; add in Gary Hart’s Monkey Business for a little spice; mix in the hope, optimism, and outsize personalities of 2008 then turn up the heat on a 24/7, Twitter-fueled news cycle and the primaries become a breathless, countdown-driven, American Idol-esque spectacle.

Either way, here we are. Politics as the art of the inexhaustible instead of the art of the possible.

Look, I love civic life. In sixth grade, I petitioned and spoke to my local library board about expanded access to resources. One of these days I’m going to find the time to figure out how the mosquito abatement district works. I’m fascinated by the inner workings of government. I want other people to be interested in it, too.

It is not, however, meant to be an Aaron Sorkin production. Most days, there is no “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet” speech to be heard. It should 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 toothbrush.

I was plenty inspired by another candidate – inspired enough to knock doors and send texts. It didn’t work out. I was sad about that for a while. But I moved on because there was work to do.

Should we want inspiration? Yes, because it leads to aspiration. Primaries should be about who we are and what we stand for today. It’s about creating stretch goals and moving us forward. It’s about making sure the person who emerges at the end bears our standards, not merely their own.

I’d argue this year’s primary was that for all the reasons Coates cites above. Now it’s time to get to work.

We have to stop thinking of voting as a self-centered act and think of it as a society-centered act.

Once the general election rolls around – and this is true for the presidential election through all the down-ballot races – we have to look for our inspiration from the issues, not the candidate.

If you need inspiration in the presidential election, seek it in the issues that affect the daily lives of people:

This is a year when voter suppression is active in a way it hasn’t been since the 1960s. It’s more important than ever to vote if you’re mobile, white, healthy, or can generally move through the world unencumbered. If you lack inspiration, consider that it is your job is to protect the rights of those whose rights are most under threat. Your job is to reduce harm. If it helps, consider yourself a super hero whose wields the ballot the way Captain America and Wonder Woman wields a sword and a shield.

Voting isn’t about idealism, it’s about pragmatism. If you want idealism, consider activism. With activism, the real work of inspirational politics doesn’t happen in the voting booth. It happens long before that. And on this point, here’s noted moderate pushover and compromiser* Noam Chomsky on 2020:

Well, there is a traditional left position, which has been pretty much forgotten, unfortunately, but it’s the one I think we should adhere to. That’s the position that real politics is constant activism. It’s quite different from the establishment position, which says politics means focus, laser-like, on the quadrennial extravaganza, then go home and let your superiors take over.

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.

At this moment, the difference between the candidates is a chasm. There has never been a greater difference. It should be obvious to anyone who’s not living under a rock. So the traditional left position says, “Take the 15 minutes, push the lever, go back to work.”

Now, the activist left has not been making the choice that you mentioned. It’s been doing both.

Take Biden’s campaign positions. Farther to the left than any Democratic candidate in memory on things like climate. It’s far better than anything that preceded it. Not because Biden had a personal conversion or the DNC had some great insight, but because they’re being hammered on by activists coming out of the Sanders movement and others. The climate program, a $2 trillion commitment to dealing with the extreme threat of environmental catastrophe, was largely written by the Sunrise Movement and strongly endorsed by the leading activists on climate change, the ones who managed to get the Green New Deal on the legislative agenda. That’s real politics.

I sure didn’t expect to ever be quoting Noam Chomsky, but here we are.

Vote. Then get back to work.

* In case it’s not obvious, my tongue is buried six layers deep in my cheek here.

Image: “2008 Presidential election early Voting Lines, Charlotte” by James Willamor is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

There’s no comparison

Politics

Last night was a travesty, but there is no comparison between what Trump and Biden did in the debate last night.

In moments like this, we’ll look to establish parity between the two men. We’ll be so disgusted with the process that rather than tax our pandemic-drained brains with the work of sorting one from the other, we’ll lump them both together, curse our two-party system, and toss it all in the bin.

Yes, Biden called Trump a fool, a clown, and told him to shut up. That’s not great if you prefer your politics polite enough to discuss while drinking tea and nibbling biscuits. But we’ve been out of tea and biscuits for a while now.

I can’t say I’m disciplined enough to act differently when faced with a similar barrage. I know I’m not.

Make no mistake, Trump wanted to push Biden to a place where the Vice-President’s actions might be compared with his own. If you know you’re not better than your opponent, try to make him look like he’s as bad as you.

But this obscures three very striking things that happened last night:

1.

Donald Trump – a man who was elected to represent the best of us – told the Proud Boys, who stand for violent white supremacy as the Klan once did, to “stand down and stand by.”

When asked to denounce white supremacy by the moderator, and specifically asked by Biden to denounce the Proud Boys, he basically told them to Netflix and chill until their help was required.

The President of the United States gave an order to a group of white supremacists to be ready when he needs them.

You might be unhappy with Biden’s debate performance but he didn’t attempt command and control of a group of terrorists.

Would you associate yourself with people like that? Trump did. If you vote for him, you’re associating with them, too. Maybe in 2016 you could convince yourself that he was someone else, but you can’t now.

2.

Donald Trump – a man who was elected to represent the best of us – asked his supporters to go down to the polls and watch over people voting. The very actions he decried in 2016.

Trump would like us to believe this is normal during elections: For supporters of a particular candidate to mosey over to election sites and hover over the proceedings. He wants you to think this is pollwatching.

It’s not. I know you know pollwatching involves training and careful attention, not using your physical body as an obstacle. In light of the above, it’s clear this was another attempt at voter intimidation and suppression. (I’m not even getting into all the lies he said about mail-in ballots. As Biden learned last night, you’ll wear yourself out by trying to refute everything Trump says as he says it.)

With everything else last night, this moment seems not to be given the attention it deserves.

Trump wants to steal the election through physical violence and suppression. He wants to sow doubt and suspicion of the whole process and foment disgust among the electorate. He wants you to believe the lie that there’s no difference between him and Biden. If the above wasn’t enough to convince you though:

3.

Donald Trump – a man who was elected to represent the best of us – tried to shame a father for his son’s drug addiction.

We should want a President who has compassion for the illness experienced by another person’s family. Or, at least, not to mention it. Trump can’t do that. It’s not in his nature. He’s so uncomfortable with sadness as an emotion that he can’t bear to understand or accept sorrow or weakness. He has to shame you for it.

Would you ever do that? Why would we want a President who does?

—

If you don’t vote for Biden, you’re voting for, and affirming, the above. In a different world that doesn’t have the dominance of a two-party system that might not be the case.

We have to vote within the world as it exists if we’re ever going to get the world as we’d like it to be.

If you’d like our country to be different, your choice is clear.
If you abhor violence, your choice is clear.
If you care about free and fair elections, your choice is clear.
If when your friends and family are hurting, your instinct is to pull them close, rather than shame them for their weakness, your choice is clear.

Because there’s no comparison.

A man out of time: Edgar Hansen, 1924-2019

Uncategorized

My grandpa Edgar “Ed” Hansen passed away on Friday June 7th around 10:25 in the morning, two days after his 94th birthday. He lived well and died fighting.

I started to write about all the things I learned from him, but lately – despite my intentions – Writing Something has been a hill to climb. All that white space on the page, trying to make ten fingers connect with everything in my brain…it’s overwhelming.

Creativity is better with limits so I started this as an Instagram caption then hit the character limit and moved it over to Facebook. Somehow only having to see a paragraph at a time made the words come. (Also there was gin.)

So, my grandpa. Not grandfather, but grandpa.

His obituary notes he went to Lane Tech High School and was a purchasing agent at FJW Industries. Somewhere I have this old, blurry photo of him sitting at his desk in a short-sleeved shirt and tie with a sign in the background that says something like “Keep off the purchasing man.” I think it was a promotional sign for some service. The photo is a window into another era.

He was, too.

God, he was funny. Any time more than three people were gathered around a table he’d sit down, size everyone up and rest his thick forearms on the table and with a glint in his eye, he’d crack a smile and say:

“So I suppose you’re all wondering why I called this meeting.”

He was a man from another time. Rat Pack timing combined with Catskills shtick, Ronald Regan hair, George Hamilton’s tan, and Johnny Carson’s suits. He was short, but had the strength of an ox and the body of a boxer with Popeye arms.

He had a desire for order and structure brought on by a childhood in an orphanage and early adulthood in the Navy during World War II.

A cereal for every weekday. Breakfast dishes laid out before bed. He ironed all his own clothes, including his underwear.

He was the first to leap up – not get up, but leap up – to open a door or help a lady with her coat or teach a gaggle of kids in a restaurant how to make it look like you were bending your parents’ best silver.

Talking with him was like dialogue out of an old black and white movie. The Thin Man meets a Jimmy Cagney flick.

“How are you?”
“Compared to what?”

“What have you been up to?”
“Staying off the streets and out of trouble.”

I learned a lot from him. I forget which bits I stole from him and which ones are my own.

The shtick got him through a lot of the years near the end. The bad years when dementia and Alzheimer’s started to eat away at his mind and his body. If you didn’t know him and talked to him for a half hour, you’d swear he was on top of his game. But it was like catching the 6pm show at the Copa without realizing the 8pm show was exactly the same.

He met my grandmother in the 1940s on the Northwest Side of Chicago when he was 17 and she was 14. They were together until she died five years ago. There’s a good story about how they met and like most of his stories it’s a mix of apocrypha and vivid detail. I don’t know how much of it’s true and don’t much care.

My grandpa was manly in that classic way that mixed a no-nonsense attitude with kindness and chivalry. You do what your parents tell you and go to church on Sundays. No lady opens her own door in his presence. A man drives the car and carries the packages. Be nice to old ladies and children. Drink scotch and black coffee. Own a pool table. Mow your own lawn. Flirt with respect.

One time he took me to see Empire Strikes Back but I ate too much candy and felt sick so he took me home with no complaints. In retrospect, I really appreciated that he didn’t make me “tough it out.”

Fuck Alzheimer’s, man. Grief is hard enough without having to dial back a few years to remember who your loved one really was.

I’ve had this photo on a bookshelf for a long while now. I don’t remember how old it is, but it’s at least five years old, but less than ten. His wavy hair, dark sunglasses, windbreaker, and easy grin make him look like an aging jet pilot. It’s taken at Arlington Racetrack and he’s got his arm around this blond woman who’s maybe in her late 20s and holding some kind of elongated trumpet. She looks as if she’s about to compete in an equestrian competition and then welcome the Royal Court of Upper West Farthingtonshire.

It is equal parts ridiculous and curious, just like him.

In the last days of his life he was pumped full of morphine in an attempt to keep him comfortable. My grandpa was not a man who liked to be comfortable.

A day before he died, his mental and physical states deteriorated, enough narcotics in him to make a horse take a nap, he kept trying to get out of bed. A man who’d been retired for decades insisted to his grandchildren and daughter that he “had to go to work.”

Ed Hansen died in bed but lived every day of his life with strength.

In a single moment between Klobuchar and Kavanaugh are all the things we do to women

Politics, , ,

It’s the moment with Senator Amy Klobuchar that sticks with me.

The testimony and questioning of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh was a microcosm of what women have to deal with every single day.

The need for women to “manage their emotions” to be “taken seriously.” The way men giving full vent to their anger and passion is a measure of just how serious they are.

The questions about whether a woman’s story should be believed if it is told publicly after a certain period of time – even if it’s already been told before to others in private because of the perilous stakes and consequences for women to report assault to any authority.

The dismissal of womens’ expertise, no matter how much education and experience they have or titles or degrees they earn. The way a woman feels she has to call upon all that education – at a level beyond the men to whom she’s speaking – to provide a scientific basis for her memory recall as part of her plea to be believed.

All this in the face of male entitlement and anger. Their gaslighting and attempts to flip a basic level of inquiry back on the questioner. A demand for her to prove either her right to participate in the discussion and confirm she is above reproach in the matter before he will acquiesce to a response.

Not to mention the way men let a woman be in the room to represent them as long as they can shove her to the side at any moment and say what they’re really thinking.

The way men will circle the wagons to protect their privilege and right to be wherever they feel they should be in whatever manner they feel.

(And, sadly, the way some women will do the same to protect the system they hope will protect them, even though that system wasn’t built for them.)

There were a lot of examples of the above in Dr. Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony.

But it was Kavanaugh’s moment with Klobuchar that sticks with me.

Klobuchar: “Was there ever a time that you couldn’t remember what happened or part of what happened the night before?”
Kavanaugh: “No. I remember what happened. And I think you’ve probably had beers, Senator.” [Kavanaugh smiles and gestures toward Senator Klobuchar.]
Klobuchar: “So you’re saying there’s never been a case where you drank so much that you didn’t happen the night before or part of what happened?”
Kavanaugh: “You’re asking about blackout…I don’t know. [Gestures toward Senator Klobuchar again.] Have you?” [Kavanaugh smiles, exhales, pauses.]
Klobuchar: “Could you answer the question, Judge? [Kavanaugh leans back in his chair, looks up and scowls.] “That’s not happened? Is that your answer?”
Kavanaugh: “Yeah, and I’m curious if you have.” [Kavanaugh gestures at Senator Klobuchar again.]
Klobuchar: “I have no drinking problem, Judge.”
Kavanaugh: “Yeah, nor do I.”

There it is.

The smarmy grin. The way he turns the question back on her to leave himself blameless. Dismissing the seriousness of the question while at the same time indicting her of the same offense. The gestures toward her. His effort to force her to answer the question before he will. The way she finally gives in and accepts his terms of the argument just so they can move on and she can get what she needs to do her job. Failing to get an acquittal through guilt by association, he offers his half-answer in response (“Nor do I”) which seems to run counter to his half-answer in the midst of his obfuscation (“I don’t know”).

It doesn’t matter at all that the reason Senator Klobuchar hasn’t blacked out from drinking is because she’s the daughter of an alcoholic and is “pretty careful about drinking,” in her words. It doesn’t matter than Judge Kavanaugh apologizes for the way he tried to dismiss the senator, particularly because it’s clear he did it after someone pulled him aside and told him exactly why that kind of pushback was going to spectacularly backfire on him.

Because none of this should have happened in the first place. But it did. And it does.

Senator Klobuchar’s expertise at navigating the exchange is evident. Because it’s no doubt happened to her many times.

It happens to every woman. It’s the minefield she walks through every day. It’s what women in secret Facebook groups and text threads and hushed conversations call the emotional labor of their lives.

Maybe it’s impossible for most men to conceptualize all the reasons why women don’t report assault.

But this moment between Senator Klobuchar and Judge Kavanaugh is a pretty good example of why.

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.

Chance The Rapper Buys Chicagoist

What will Chance The Rapper’s Chicagoist become?

Chicago, Media, Music, ,

Chance The Rapper Buys Chicagoist

(Disclosure: I was a writer and editor with Chicagoist from 2004 to 2007 and stayed in close communication with people who worked there up until the time it was sold to DNAinfo. While some of the below is based on knowledge gleaned during that time, none of this is based on off-the-record conversations. For my full ethics disclosure statement, read this.)

Last week, Chance the Rapper announced he’d purchased Chicagoist, a website which covers Chicago news and culture, from WNYC, which bought it from DNAInfo/Gothamist after the local news sites were shut down in the wake of a unionization effort.

Why? And what’s next?

Owning the medium to own the message?

A brief announcement about the sale divulged little about Chance’s plans, but lyrics in a simultaneously released song called “I Might Need Security” perhaps shed some light on his intentions:

I missed a Crain’s interview, they tried leaking my addy
I donate to the schools next, they call me a deadbeat daddy
The Sun-Times gettin’ that Rauner business
I got a hit-list so long I don’t know how to finish
I bought the Chicagoist just to run you racist bitches out of business

Genius can give you the background on the media beefs above and the Chicago Reader’s Leor Galil goes deeper into the issues between Chicago media and Chicago hip-hop.

Of greater concern for Chance’s new venture is the moment last year when Chance pressured MTV News to remove an essay from its website that he and his manager Pat Corcoran “both agreed that the article was offensive,” in Corcoran’s words.

Suffice it to say Chance keeps the media at arm’s length and has been savvy about managing his image, going all the way back to 2013 in this Chicago magazine piece from Jessica Hopper (who coincidentally was MTV News’s editorial director last year):

Chance the Rapper doesn’t want to show me his hood. The burgeoning hip-hop star sits in my car behind the Harold Washington Library issuing a flurry of excuses: It’s too hot. Chatham, the South Side neighborhood where he grew up and filmed his viral video “Hey Ma” (it’s on YouTube), is too far. He has to be at the studio in an hour. Anyway, that place isn’t really his story, he insists. His story is “here,” he says, motioning toward the library.

On one hand, you could imagine Chance is tired of being misrepresented by “the media” and like other savvy cultural creators he’s taken the means of production into his hands to exert more control over his image. The MTV News blow-up, the “Security” lyrics and the Chicago magazine excerpt all lend some credence to this theory.

Also of note is Corcoran’s $15,000 founding member donation to Block Club Chicago, the new hyperlocal Chicago news organization (disclosure: I am also a member of BCC but at 1% of that amount). Considering Chance’s philanthropic endeavors and he and Corcoran’s recent interactions with journalism it’s tough to know whether this is more in line with the former or an attempt to hedge bets on the latter.

To be taken seriously as a funder of independent journalism, he’ll need to address the questions around all of the above. But if I had to guess, I’d imagine he’ll be a media owner more in the mold of a Mansueto or Bezos than an Adelson.

Chance has been an undeniable force for good in Chicago culture. The erstwhile Chancellor Jonathan Bennett is the son of politically active parents whose lives have been devoted to public service. He is seemingly a devoted father, philanthropist and community advocate who has donated upwards of two million dollars to Chicago’s public schools, testified at the Chicago City Council and supported voter registration efforts. When we talk about a music community, it looks a lot like what Chance creates in Chicago by investing in its people.

Chance’s familiar critique of mass media is that it too often misses nuance in favor of an easy-to-swallow narratives and elevates conflict over conversation. Buying Chicagoist could be a way to put create another independent media organization in Chicago, albeit one run by a well-heeled single investor, that serves as a catalyst for the kind of social change he’s been creating.

A business plan for a business, man

Mike Fourcher, a former Chicagoist colleague and also the former publisher of a few hyperlocal news and politics sites, delves into the business and audience side of things in this post. In short, re-building Chicagoist won’t be easy. The business model it had as part of the Gothamist network is lost as a standalone site. With an increasingly mobile audience accessing news via phones, local news sites are competing for attention with not just national publications but also everything that’s in app form whether it’s Facebook, Netflix, Fortnite or text threads.

But with this sale, Chance and Chicagoist will have some valuable assets most startups don’t. When it was shut down, Chicagoist had a sizable social media audience of 500,000 across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, monthly unique visitors of 700,000 and an email list of 29,000 subscribers. All that’s waiting to be reactivated.

One possible way for Chicagoist to start re-engaging and building on its previous audience is to act as an amplifier/partner of news from the startups who cover underserved-by-news neighborhoods still trying to get to Chicagoist’s size like City Bureau and The Triibe Chicago. This isn’t about aggregating the work of others, but using Chicagoist’s already existing audience to support community engagement.

Going back to Mike’s post, he ends it this way:

Maybe Mr. Bennett wants to turn Chicagoist into a kind of “Players Tribune” for entertainers. Maybe he’d like to use the title as platform for something other than news. Perhaps he is thinking of creating a site about the experience of Black Chicago, a sorely under-reported topic. “Chicagoist” could mean so many things. We shouldn’t limit ourselves to what it’s meant in the past.

All of which leads to one a couple key questions: What is Chicagoist’s voice going to become and what does its audience need and want?

I have a few thoughts on how to answer that.

What could Chicagoist be?

If he has the time, team and treasure to invest, Chance’s Chicagoist could be an exploration of, and a check on, emerging power in Chicago: who has it, how they use it and what are the ways that power affects the everyday lives of Chicagoans, particularly those on the South and West sides who often find a surge of interest in their concerns when something goes wrong, but not as often when something goes right. How is power being used for good as well as for destruction?

It shouldn’t be another variation on “watchdog” reporting though. It can, and should, be celebratory. Imagine this article as an ongoing content vertical with products and events built around it. Billy Penn is already doing something like this with Who’s Next in food, music, the law, education, schools, etc. Someone else will try it here if Chance/Chicagoist doesn’t.

Crain’s Chicago Business covers established power with a specific downtown focus and a high-income audience. Daily papers do this for politics and big business. Local publications cover some of this in a breaking-news, scoop-driven way. But it’s rare to see, for example, a deep dive into the history of a longtime neighborhood developer building condos with first-floor retail in a neighborhood that isn’t on a “hot” list. Not to mention those just coming up.

There’s also something to be said about being a voice for those whose views often go underrepresented in this city. Chicagoist could be the source that represents Pilsen and Humboldt Park and Jackson Park in the way that the Tribune represents…well, often, the western suburbs, bridging the gap between young progressives and older, passionate Chicagoans. It’ll mean taking stands, reflecting the grit of the city, avoiding both the middle ground and “both sides” reporting – pointing out truth, lies and agendas.

This kind of voice would mean elevating people on the front lines of these community issues, making sure the audience sees itself reflected in what’s discussed and giving the readers a stake in it, which increases relevancy, word of mouth and audience size.

We see these voices all over social media. They are guiding the conversation and too often the traditional news media products are playing catch-up to them or just throwing up a screenshot without delving into context. They should be a part of what Chicagoist does, even if, or perhaps especially if, it doesn’t involve traditional journalists.

While the Tribune seems to have cornered the market on op-eds by people who are leaving Chicago and Illinois, Chicagoist has an opportunity to talk about why people stay here and build. Young entrepreneurs who have never set foot in 1871 are creating businesses here. The national political organization Run for Something had an event here last year that was even larger than one in D.C. Who attended, why are they running? Can we track their campaigns in a way that is shows the path and doesn’t follow the patterns of who’s-winning-who’s-losing, horse-race journalism?

When we do this, we find:

  • The next lead-contaminated pipes before they harm the brains of our kids and make them more susceptible to violence
  • The next models for entrepreneurship in neighborhoods which others can replicate and build a hyperlocal economy
  • The next political movement leaders
  • The next…Chance the Rapper

It’s about giving the audience an understanding of power and how it’s used but also in reinvigorating the trust between reader and publisher by demonstrating that we’re listening to what they need, not just telling them what we think they need. Hearken, a Chicago startup with national reach, has been pioneering this approach. I’m surprised more newsrooms aren’t using their tech and process. Also, City Bureau’s public newsroom collaborations have showed that developing news products side-by-side with readers has tremendous value for the end product and develops audience loyalty.

This starts with research on not just on the previous Chicagoist audience, but also its potential readers – the ones who stepped away from Chicagoist and the ones it never appealed to – as well as the places they live. The geographic communities and the psychographic communities – their interests and needs. What do they need out of a media publisher vs. a mobile website vs. an email product vs. a social feed vs. ongoing coverage of a topic that’s created for the place in which it appears.

But more importantly, it allows Chicagoist to own the relationship with its readers and reinvigorate the entire model of useful products and information given to readers in exchange for trust, money and information about themselves. It takes work, but it’s how you develop a true business model.

It also makes the content actionable for the audience. For someone with Chance’s philanthropic leanings, a media organization that consistently says “If this is important to you, here’s what you can do…” could be an important next step.

Correction: A previous version of this article listed Pat Corcoran’s Block Club Chicago contribution as $10,000 based on this page. Block Club Chicago Director of Strategy Jen Sabella says the actual amount was $15,000 and said that “Pat’s contribution to BCC was not on behalf of Chance…he just liked/missed his neighborhood news and wanted to help us get going again.”

Image of Chance the Rapper by Flickr user Julio Enriquez licensed through Creative Commons

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

Families Belong Together protest on Clark St. in Chicago on June 30th, 2018

Our country was founded on a culture of dissent. That’s worth celebrating

Politics, Race, ,
Families Belong Together protest on Clark St. in Chicago on June 30th, 2018
Families Belong Together protest on Clark St. in Chicago on June 30th, 2018

Every year on the 4th of July, I read the Declaration of Independence as a reminder of where we’ve been, how far we have to go and the tools we have available to create what a later document would describe as “a more perfect union.”

From the beginning, we’ve failed to live up to our stated ideals. We said “all men are created equal,” but didn’t really mean it. Doubling down, we extended “certain unalienable rights” only to men.

Then, just as the Declaration goes into its final pitch, there’s a line that describes Native Americans as “the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

The document that began the work of building our country was incomplete, exclusionary. At best, a work in progress. At worst, a codification of prejudice.

(Side note: I want to know which horny founding father was responsible for introducing the phrase “manly firmness” into one of our country’s original documents. John Hancock seems the obvious culprit here, but how much you want to bet it was Thomas Jefferson? Seriously, how were we expecting to be taken seriously with a dick joke in our manifesto?)

Many of us believe we are at one of our country’s lowest points and lack a cause for celebration. At the risk of further twisting the knife, we haven’t lacked for low points: the Alien and Sedition Acts, slavery, the Trail of Tears, Jim Crow laws and the 13th amendment, Japanese internment camps, government-sponsored redlining that created an ongoing racial wealth gap, the AIDS crisis, not to mention the persistent stones in our shoes brought on by a seemingly permanent surveillance state, paying women 82 cents for every dollar a man earns and allowing Rob Schneider to still be a thing.

Reading the Declaration of Independence can seem an indictment of our country’s founding. Yet the same document that creates a separate and unequal state allows for the rectification of the same, a way forward in times when the power of the people seems to be at its lowest. It is a reminder that we have been here before.

To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

“The consent of the governed…alter or abolish it…most likely to affect their Safety…” These seem to be words that track with our current situation. A suggestion that changes can and should be made to part of our government, not necessarily the whole of it.

…when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…

We could start with the Electoral College, but your mileage may vary on this point.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good…

Sounds familiar. And then there’s this…

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

Sure, this referred exclusively to white Europeans when it was written, but applications can be found anew.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice…

This one seems somewhat TBD but, you know.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

Gross, but still.

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world…

Work in progress!

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

Is it a stretch to apply this to declarations of “the enemy of the American people?” Maybe. Maybe not.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us…

“Send tweet.”

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

We can read the above and not necessarily think it should follow that “these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States” or we should “be Absolved from all Allegiance“ or that “all political connection between them and the State…is and ought to be totally dissolved.”

We can and should, however, read the Declaration as an endorsement of protest – yes, even and especially ones that inconvenience, upset and discomfort. It is dissent itself. Taking to the streets to petition for redress is literally our country’s birthright. It is how many love it so much that they refuse to leave it.

From there, we organize to march, we march to vote, we vote to protect.

Among the fireworks, the hot dogs and the beers is the belief that hope exists for a better tomorrow. We aren’t done yet.

Let there be no greater reminder of this than a holiday reimagined and celebrated as ongoing work to protect the vulnerable, stand for equality and create true freedom for all.

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.