published in the New York Times on Friday, July 30.
Until last week, Christian Jurinka had never heard complaints about the stenciled advertisements his agency sprays on the sidewalks of major cities. But when neon pink-and-yellow ads for a Brazilian brand of flip-flops landed on the North Side of Chicago, they immediately drew the ire of a Lincoln Park stroller.
The pedestrian, Bruce Beavis, 51, complained to the police, his alderman, Vi Daley of the 43rd Ward, the news media and Mr. Jurinka’s business partner, who promised to send a cleaning crew to remove the advertisements the next day.
“We tell all our clients that this is an activity that some communities have no problem with, and other communities frown upon,” said Mr. Jurinka, the co-founder of Attack, a provider of guerrilla marketing services, who said they would not to stencil ads on Chicago streets again. “The law is somewhat cloudy.”
But Matt Smith, a spokesman for the Department of Streets and Sanitation, said Chicago’s policy on sidewalk stenciling was not ambiguous.
“We have zero tolerance for people who would use the public way for their promotions,” Mr. Smith said, “and will go after them any way we can.”
Companies may think they are going to gain an advantage, he said, “but instead they could be drawing a lot of negative publicity and fines.”
That is what happened to IBM in 2001, when it hired an agency that spray-painted ads across walkways in Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco without obtaining permits. The company was fined tens of thousands of dollars.
Russ Kellogg, director of sales for ICE Factor, another marketing agency that uses unconventional strategies, said the extensive permit process in Chicago was a disincentive to marketers.
“You either ask for permission or ask for forgiveness,” Mr. Kellogg said.
RACHEL CROMIDAS
A version of this article appeared in print on July 30, 2010, on page A17A of the National edition.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Got Available Ground? Want Free Vegetables?
By RACHEL CROMIDAS for the Chicago News Cooperative
pub. July 16, 2010 in the New York Times
In return for vegetables rather than money, some Kenwood residents are letting their properties be used by community gardeners — many of them strangers — who are strapped for space.
This so-called urban sharecropping has also been growing in popularity in Austin, Tex., and Portland, Ore., thanks to networking Web sites.
Kenwood, known for its arts-and-crafts mansions and President Barack Obama’s house, is considered a natural place for the partnerships because thousands of square feet of lawns dot the blocks between 47th and 50th Streets.
“It’s an unusual relationship,” said Deborah Hammond, a gardener who tends to 300 square feet behind a three-story mansion. “I’m not a service provider, I’m not a friend of the family, but I have a key to the back gate.”
Her use of the land has involved negotiating with the homeowner over who would pay for topsoil (they do), and plants (she does), and what to grow.
pub. July 16, 2010 in the New York Times
In return for vegetables rather than money, some Kenwood residents are letting their properties be used by community gardeners — many of them strangers — who are strapped for space.
This so-called urban sharecropping has also been growing in popularity in Austin, Tex., and Portland, Ore., thanks to networking Web sites.
Kenwood, known for its arts-and-crafts mansions and President Barack Obama’s house, is considered a natural place for the partnerships because thousands of square feet of lawns dot the blocks between 47th and 50th Streets.
“It’s an unusual relationship,” said Deborah Hammond, a gardener who tends to 300 square feet behind a three-story mansion. “I’m not a service provider, I’m not a friend of the family, but I have a key to the back gate.”
Her use of the land has involved negotiating with the homeowner over who would pay for topsoil (they do), and plants (she does), and what to grow.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Jon Burge Found Guilty On All Counts (VIDEO)
For Dateline: Chicago
By KATIE FRETLAND and RACHEL CROMIDAS
June 28, 2010
Jon Burge, the former Chicago Police commander at the center of the city’s decades long police torture scandal, was convicted today on federal charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. He faces up to 45 years in prison
Burge, 62, was expressionless as the verdict was read. He was found guilty of lying under oath in a 2003 civil court case about the torture of African American police suspects in the 1970’s and ’80’s. The jury — seven men and five women, including one African American– began deliberations at 3 p.m. Thursday. Their verdict marks the first criminal conviction of a cop in the police torture scandal. A report of a suspect being tortured by Chicago police first surfaced in 1973.
Juror Gary Dollinger, 31, said the testimonies of a former detective who was granted immunity and a convicted killer who died while in prison were crucial to his vote for conviction.
“I think it was first there was an overwhelming amount of evidence pointing to the fact that he was lying on his statements and there was some torture going on at Area 2 to coerce statements, between Andrew Wilson and Mike McDermott’s testimonies … those were the two biggest things that really pushed me over the top,” Dollinger, the CEO of an IT consultancy, said.
McDermott, Dollinger said, “he gets on the stand he looks a little scared when he’s up there, he’s got a lot on the line, they’re threatening to cut his pension, cut his health benefits lose his job.”
McDermott is a former police detective who testified he saw Burge point his gun in the direction of the area where a suspect was and that he saw Burge hold something to the suspect’s face. McDermott was an unhappy witness, who said he feared being charged with perjury and obstruction of justice if he did not recall details of the 1985 incident as the prosecution wanted him to.
McDermott’s testimony was inconsistent with his grand jury testimony.
“He changed his statement, but he never said no, there was no brutality,” Dollinger said. “[Burge] still pointed a gun and something plastic over his face.”
“All people who care about justice had a major victory today,” said Flint Taylor, an attorney for many of Burge’s accusers.
Burge attorney Bill Gamboney said he was “very disappointed and somewhat surprised” by the verdict.
“We’re starting to muster our resources together for a motion for a new trial and ultimately an appeal if it comes to that,” Gamboney said.
Burge supporter Jim Knightly, a retired Chicago police captain, vented his disappointment with the verdict.
“That they would take the word of convicted felons over a highly-decorated police officer,” Knightly said. “I’m sure Flint Taylor, the liberal attorney who has been hounding him for years, is happy. I hope he can sleep at night.”
“I’m glad it’s over,” said Ald. Ed Smith (28th), who sat through much of the trial. “This has been a great concern for a lot of people. It’s a case that has caused a black eye on the city.”
Smith said that the verdict should open the door for the release of Burge accusers who are currently imprisoned.
More than 100 people have accused Burge and officers under his command of torturing them during the 1970’s and 1980’s. The men said they were electroshocked, suffocated with plastic bags, subjected to mock executions, beaten and burned. The allegations contributed to the decision to place a moratorium on executions in Illinois, and Chicago agreed to a nearly $20 million settlement to four men who were pardoned.
Prosecutors never filed charges of assault or attempted murder and the statute of limitations has since run out.
Mark Clements, 45, cried in front of reporters in courthouse lobby Monday. He said detectives under Burge pulled on his genitals until he confessed to four murders and an arson. He served 28 years.
“I was 16 years old and these people stole my [expletive] life,” he sobbed. “I hate to tell you the truth. I sat in a prison cell, and I prayed for this day. Today is a victory for every poor person. I was 16 years old. This is America. Sixteen years old. What are we gonna do about other people who are sitting in those prisons.”
More than 20 people who claim they were tortured remain incarcerated in Illinois.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the jury’s decision was a measure of justice, and that it was sad that it took until 2010 to reach a criminal court of law.
“What’s clear is that the jury necessarily found that torture occurred in Chicago police stations at Area 2 in the 1980’s and it’s a disgrace that in this city in the 1980’s people could be subjected to abuse and torture ranging from guns to the face, guns in mouths. Suffocating, electric shocks, radiator burns and that sort of thing.”
“We need to have it on the record that this happened,” Fitzgerald said. “We need to treat it as a fact that it was proved and recognize that it was an awful thing before we can move forward.”
During the past month’s trial, federal prosecutors called four men to the witness stand to testify they were abused in an effort to prove the perjury and obstruction charges. The jury also heard testimony from Andrew Wilson, who died serving a life sentence for the killings of two police officers.
The defense argued that the police torture claims were fabricated by career criminals for the purpose of getting out of jail, and Burge broke years of silence to testify in his own defense, denying each allegation brought against him during the trial. His lawyers played up his dedication to police work — that he often went out on the street with his officers, looked in on interrogations and spent days working without going home on the case of the killings of two police officers. Burge, ill with cancer, broke down crying on the witness stand talking about that investigation.
Burge joined the police department in 1970 and two years later was assigned as an investigator at Area 2, where many of the alleged victims said they were brutalized by police.
A doctor who saw one man’s injuries in 1982 wrote a letter to then-police superintendent Richard Brzeczek asking for an investigation into a case of possible police brutality. Brzeczek forwarded the letter to Mayor Richard M. Daley, then Cook County State’s Attorney, but charges were never brought against any officers.
Daley’s name was not mentioned during the trial.
The Chicago Police Board fired Burge in 1993, three years after a report by the police department’s Office of Professional Standards sustained Wilson’s accusation that Burge abused him and found evidence of systemic abuse at Area Two.
Taylor said men who worked under Burge could still be prosecuted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. As of May, a grand jury was hearing matters involving detectives who worked under Burge at Area Two in the 1970’s and 1980’s, according to documents filed in the Burge case.
Fitzgerald declined to comment on that investigation.
Judge Joan Lefkow found that eight people could take the Fifth Amendment and not testify in the Burge case. They are former assistant state’s attorney Larry Hyman and retired police officers Michael Hoke, Thomas McKenna, Ronald Boffo, James Pienta, John Paladino, Dave Dioguardi and Leonard Bajenski.
Clements said he will never get back the time he missed with his daughter.
“My daughter is 29 years old,” he said. “I missed all those years with my daughter sitting in a prison cell for a crime I did not commit. I do not feel sorry for Jon Burge. I do not feel sorry for him.”
By KATIE FRETLAND and RACHEL CROMIDAS
June 28, 2010
Jon Burge, the former Chicago Police commander at the center of the city’s decades long police torture scandal, was convicted today on federal charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. He faces up to 45 years in prison
Burge, 62, was expressionless as the verdict was read. He was found guilty of lying under oath in a 2003 civil court case about the torture of African American police suspects in the 1970’s and ’80’s. The jury — seven men and five women, including one African American– began deliberations at 3 p.m. Thursday. Their verdict marks the first criminal conviction of a cop in the police torture scandal. A report of a suspect being tortured by Chicago police first surfaced in 1973.
Juror Gary Dollinger, 31, said the testimonies of a former detective who was granted immunity and a convicted killer who died while in prison were crucial to his vote for conviction.
“I think it was first there was an overwhelming amount of evidence pointing to the fact that he was lying on his statements and there was some torture going on at Area 2 to coerce statements, between Andrew Wilson and Mike McDermott’s testimonies … those were the two biggest things that really pushed me over the top,” Dollinger, the CEO of an IT consultancy, said.
McDermott, Dollinger said, “he gets on the stand he looks a little scared when he’s up there, he’s got a lot on the line, they’re threatening to cut his pension, cut his health benefits lose his job.”
McDermott is a former police detective who testified he saw Burge point his gun in the direction of the area where a suspect was and that he saw Burge hold something to the suspect’s face. McDermott was an unhappy witness, who said he feared being charged with perjury and obstruction of justice if he did not recall details of the 1985 incident as the prosecution wanted him to.
McDermott’s testimony was inconsistent with his grand jury testimony.
“He changed his statement, but he never said no, there was no brutality,” Dollinger said. “[Burge] still pointed a gun and something plastic over his face.”
“All people who care about justice had a major victory today,” said Flint Taylor, an attorney for many of Burge’s accusers.
Burge attorney Bill Gamboney said he was “very disappointed and somewhat surprised” by the verdict.
“We’re starting to muster our resources together for a motion for a new trial and ultimately an appeal if it comes to that,” Gamboney said.
Burge supporter Jim Knightly, a retired Chicago police captain, vented his disappointment with the verdict.
“That they would take the word of convicted felons over a highly-decorated police officer,” Knightly said. “I’m sure Flint Taylor, the liberal attorney who has been hounding him for years, is happy. I hope he can sleep at night.”
“I’m glad it’s over,” said Ald. Ed Smith (28th), who sat through much of the trial. “This has been a great concern for a lot of people. It’s a case that has caused a black eye on the city.”
Smith said that the verdict should open the door for the release of Burge accusers who are currently imprisoned.
More than 100 people have accused Burge and officers under his command of torturing them during the 1970’s and 1980’s. The men said they were electroshocked, suffocated with plastic bags, subjected to mock executions, beaten and burned. The allegations contributed to the decision to place a moratorium on executions in Illinois, and Chicago agreed to a nearly $20 million settlement to four men who were pardoned.
Prosecutors never filed charges of assault or attempted murder and the statute of limitations has since run out.
Mark Clements, 45, cried in front of reporters in courthouse lobby Monday. He said detectives under Burge pulled on his genitals until he confessed to four murders and an arson. He served 28 years.
“I was 16 years old and these people stole my [expletive] life,” he sobbed. “I hate to tell you the truth. I sat in a prison cell, and I prayed for this day. Today is a victory for every poor person. I was 16 years old. This is America. Sixteen years old. What are we gonna do about other people who are sitting in those prisons.”
More than 20 people who claim they were tortured remain incarcerated in Illinois.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the jury’s decision was a measure of justice, and that it was sad that it took until 2010 to reach a criminal court of law.
“What’s clear is that the jury necessarily found that torture occurred in Chicago police stations at Area 2 in the 1980’s and it’s a disgrace that in this city in the 1980’s people could be subjected to abuse and torture ranging from guns to the face, guns in mouths. Suffocating, electric shocks, radiator burns and that sort of thing.”
“We need to have it on the record that this happened,” Fitzgerald said. “We need to treat it as a fact that it was proved and recognize that it was an awful thing before we can move forward.”
During the past month’s trial, federal prosecutors called four men to the witness stand to testify they were abused in an effort to prove the perjury and obstruction charges. The jury also heard testimony from Andrew Wilson, who died serving a life sentence for the killings of two police officers.
The defense argued that the police torture claims were fabricated by career criminals for the purpose of getting out of jail, and Burge broke years of silence to testify in his own defense, denying each allegation brought against him during the trial. His lawyers played up his dedication to police work — that he often went out on the street with his officers, looked in on interrogations and spent days working without going home on the case of the killings of two police officers. Burge, ill with cancer, broke down crying on the witness stand talking about that investigation.
Burge joined the police department in 1970 and two years later was assigned as an investigator at Area 2, where many of the alleged victims said they were brutalized by police.
A doctor who saw one man’s injuries in 1982 wrote a letter to then-police superintendent Richard Brzeczek asking for an investigation into a case of possible police brutality. Brzeczek forwarded the letter to Mayor Richard M. Daley, then Cook County State’s Attorney, but charges were never brought against any officers.
Daley’s name was not mentioned during the trial.
The Chicago Police Board fired Burge in 1993, three years after a report by the police department’s Office of Professional Standards sustained Wilson’s accusation that Burge abused him and found evidence of systemic abuse at Area Two.
Taylor said men who worked under Burge could still be prosecuted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. As of May, a grand jury was hearing matters involving detectives who worked under Burge at Area Two in the 1970’s and 1980’s, according to documents filed in the Burge case.
Fitzgerald declined to comment on that investigation.
Judge Joan Lefkow found that eight people could take the Fifth Amendment and not testify in the Burge case. They are former assistant state’s attorney Larry Hyman and retired police officers Michael Hoke, Thomas McKenna, Ronald Boffo, James Pienta, John Paladino, Dave Dioguardi and Leonard Bajenski.
Clements said he will never get back the time he missed with his daughter.
“My daughter is 29 years old,” he said. “I missed all those years with my daughter sitting in a prison cell for a crime I did not commit. I do not feel sorry for Jon Burge. I do not feel sorry for him.”
Fitzgerald: Burge Verdict is a 'Measure of Justice' from Chicago News Cooperative on Vimeo.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Food Vans to Aid Hungry Children
Also from Dateline: Chicago:
By RACHEL CROMIDAS
June 18, 2010
With food stamp enrollment at a record high in Illinois, the Greater Chicago Food Depository is expanding its programs to reach the children of low-income families that struggle the most with hunger in the summer months.
Starting Monday, the first day of summer break for Chicago Public Schools, the depository will send two vans with sandwiches and crackers to community gatherings and Chicago Park District day-camps at lunchtime in Chicago Heights and Little Village/Lawndale–two communities with the highest number of under-served children, according to a recently released report by the depository.
“There are these great enrichment activities in [the Park District],” said Kate Maehr, the executive director of the food depository, “and it is a tragedy that there are kids coming to learn how to dance and play sports and be better readers with empty stomachs.”
As of July 2009, more than 500,000 children in Cook County received subsidized breakfasts and lunches during the school year through federal government-sponsored programs, but the summer meal program for these children run by the United States Department of Agriculture reaches fewer than 30% of children in need, according to Diane Doherty, director of the Illinois Hunger Coalition.
Though more children are needy over summer break, Ms. Doherty is skeptical of the lasting reach of food delivery vans.
“My concern about mobile vans for children is that they pull up, provide [children] with food, and then they leave,” she said.
By RACHEL CROMIDAS
June 18, 2010
With food stamp enrollment at a record high in Illinois, the Greater Chicago Food Depository is expanding its programs to reach the children of low-income families that struggle the most with hunger in the summer months.
Starting Monday, the first day of summer break for Chicago Public Schools, the depository will send two vans with sandwiches and crackers to community gatherings and Chicago Park District day-camps at lunchtime in Chicago Heights and Little Village/Lawndale–two communities with the highest number of under-served children, according to a recently released report by the depository.
“There are these great enrichment activities in [the Park District],” said Kate Maehr, the executive director of the food depository, “and it is a tragedy that there are kids coming to learn how to dance and play sports and be better readers with empty stomachs.”
As of July 2009, more than 500,000 children in Cook County received subsidized breakfasts and lunches during the school year through federal government-sponsored programs, but the summer meal program for these children run by the United States Department of Agriculture reaches fewer than 30% of children in need, according to Diane Doherty, director of the Illinois Hunger Coalition.
Though more children are needy over summer break, Ms. Doherty is skeptical of the lasting reach of food delivery vans.
“My concern about mobile vans for children is that they pull up, provide [children] with food, and then they leave,” she said.
DuPage Struggles to Handle Increased Need for Public Aid
(My latest from the CNC, published in today's New York Times Chicago insert:
By DIRK JOHNSON and RACHEL CROMIDAS
Not far from million-dollar homes in DuPage County, a line of people spills through the doors of a public aid office in Villa Park, now the busiest branch of the Illinois Department of Human Services.
As many as 900 county residents come to the office every day looking for food stamps, emergency financial assistance and vouchers for medical care, said Phyllis Baxter, the site’s administrator.
The surge in suburban poverty reflects the economic collapse for people who had been solidly middle class, including former homeowners with college degrees. It also underscores the changing demographics in some older commuter cities, now home to more Spanish-speaking immigrants and working-class families fleeing tough city neighborhoods. The state’s second-busiest Human Services office is in Blue Island, just south of Chicago in Cook County.
Requests for help at the DuPage County office have soared by about 60 percent in the past five years, Ms. Baxter said. “They come through those doors,” she said, “and they’ll say, ‘I lost my job. I need food. I can’t pay my medical bills.’ ”
The state, which is some $13 billion in debt, has been unable to increase the size of the office’s 81-member staff, which leaves caseworkers scrambling to manage increasing workloads. “The stress level is off the charts,” Ms. Baxter said. “And, remember, plenty of our people have also got somebody in the family who has lost a job.”
Hue Tran has worked as a caseworker in DuPage County for 32 years. She said she had never seen anything like the overwhelming demands of the last two years.
“I just have to work faster,” Ms. Tran said. “The phones are ringing, people are lining up, they’re demanding to know why they’re not getting benefits.”
Ms. Tran and other social workers said many suburbanites, who were living comfortably not long ago, were upset that they now had to beg for help.
“Sometimes they get angry and then they apologize,” said Ms. Tran, who said she had counseled many people who had started crying. “I just tell them: ‘I understand. It’s not your fault.’ ”
Other caseworkers say they feel guilty that they cannot spend enough time on clients. Ebony Martin, 32, said that four years ago, when she came to the DuPage County office, she had a caseload of about 900. Today she has more than 2,300 cases.
“I made a color-coded chart that tells me these are the people that I must — absolutely must — get to today,” Ms. Martin said.
Kara Murphy, the executive director of Access DuPage, a nonprofit group that helps uninsured people find health care, said enrollment in the program had jumped 55 percent in the last two years, to about 11,600.
The sharp increase in the need for services has strained the social infrastructure in suburban areas like DuPage County, which for a long time served chiefly as bedroom communities for prosperous commuters and their families. DuPage County, which has nearly one million residents, is the region’s second-most-populous county, after Cook. It has the area’s highest median household income, more than $73,000, according to a 2007 report by the Heartland Alliance. The unemployment rate has grown to nearly 9 percent in 2010, nearly triple the rate of the early 1990s, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Services for the working poor and the jobless can be scarce in the suburbs. Candace King, executive director of the DuPage Federation on Human Services Reform, said cities provided more programs to address poverty, like health clinics and food pantries. Housing costs tend to be higher in the suburbs, Ms. King said, and it can be difficult to rely on the smaller mass transit system.
“It is far better to be poor in Chicago than poor in DuPage,” she said.
Human Services officials say the 60 percent growth in caseload in DuPage County in five years has far outpaced the statewide increase of about 20 percent.
At a time when the suburbs have an increased need for programs for the poor, Ms. King said the state was so broke it could not afford to offer new services in places like DuPage County. “We’re trying desperately to keep the ones that are here alive,” she said.
Ms. King estimated that 15 percent of the county’s families earned less than $44,000 but more than the federal poverty level of $22,000. She said it is within that earnings range where aid organizations see families struggle. These people have “too much to get help, but not enough to get by,” she said.
Despite the dearth of social programs in DuPage County, many poor people have been leaving the city for the suburbs, according to demographers like Kenneth Johnson, a former Loyola University sociologist now at the University of New Hampshire. In many cases, parents of small children say they left Chicago to flee gangs.
LaTanya Chase, 28, grew up on the South Side of Chicago, but moved to the Austin neighborhood before settling in Glendale Heights four years ago. Ms. Chase, who works 24 to 30 hours a week at a CVS drugstore, learned quickly that she could not depend on suburban mass transit and would need a car.
But it was still worth moving to the suburbs, she said, because she does not have to worry about her 8-year-old daughter being caught in gang cross-fire while playing in the front yard.
“I’m here because I was looking for a better place for a child to grow up,” said Ms. Chase, who goes to the Villa Park office for food stamps and a health-care voucher. “It’s as simple as that.”
The growing racial and ethnic diversity in DuPage County are changing the clichés about white havens for the country-club set. Census Bureau figures show particularly strong growth among Hispanics, about 12 percent of the county’s population in 2008, up from 9 percent in 2000.
Officials at the Human Services office in Villa Park say its caseload of people who speak Spanish as a primary language has doubled, to about 15,000, over the past five years.
Joshua Drucker, a professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said the collapse of the home-building industry has hit Hispanics especially hard. Many Hispanic men do drywall and roofing work. Those jobs, Mr. Drucker said, which paid relatively well, have largely evaporated in the last two to three years.
The collapse of housing jobs sent Graciela Martinez, 37, to the Human Services waiting room with her four young children to receive food stamps. Much of the talking for the family was done by her oldest child, Amel — “I’m almost 8” — who wore a University of Wisconsin T-shirt and said he wanted to be a doctor.
Ms. Martinez said her fiancé, the father of the children, was a roofer whose work hours had shrunk to almost nothing. It became impossible to pay the rent, she said, so the family moved in with her sister in suburban West Chicago, an old railroad town with perhaps the longest-standing Mexican-American community in DuPage County.
One recent day at the Human Services office, people stood at the back of the long line on an asphalt parking lot that was baking in the sun. Later, when the skies darkened and the heavens opened, some people pushed inside to keep dry; others simply stood in the rain.
Ms. Baxter, the administrator, said the sense of despair among the clients could be heartbreaking.
“We’ve got to be able to give them some hope,” said Ms. Baxter, who sat behind a beige metal desk piled high with case forms. On the bulletin board, she had pinned the phrase, “Thy will, not mine, be done.”
“You see a lot of shame and embarrassment,” she said. “You see it with people who used to have money and now they’re maybe losing everything. And you see the shame in people who have always been dirt poor, too.”
She said she told caseworkers to give people time to work through their emotions. “I know we’re in a hurry,” she said, “but we’ve got to give them time to talk it out.”
She shook her head and lifted her eyes.
“Because they’re hurting,” she said. “And they’re so scared.”
By DIRK JOHNSON and RACHEL CROMIDAS
Not far from million-dollar homes in DuPage County, a line of people spills through the doors of a public aid office in Villa Park, now the busiest branch of the Illinois Department of Human Services.
As many as 900 county residents come to the office every day looking for food stamps, emergency financial assistance and vouchers for medical care, said Phyllis Baxter, the site’s administrator.
The surge in suburban poverty reflects the economic collapse for people who had been solidly middle class, including former homeowners with college degrees. It also underscores the changing demographics in some older commuter cities, now home to more Spanish-speaking immigrants and working-class families fleeing tough city neighborhoods. The state’s second-busiest Human Services office is in Blue Island, just south of Chicago in Cook County.
Requests for help at the DuPage County office have soared by about 60 percent in the past five years, Ms. Baxter said. “They come through those doors,” she said, “and they’ll say, ‘I lost my job. I need food. I can’t pay my medical bills.’ ”
The state, which is some $13 billion in debt, has been unable to increase the size of the office’s 81-member staff, which leaves caseworkers scrambling to manage increasing workloads. “The stress level is off the charts,” Ms. Baxter said. “And, remember, plenty of our people have also got somebody in the family who has lost a job.”
Hue Tran has worked as a caseworker in DuPage County for 32 years. She said she had never seen anything like the overwhelming demands of the last two years.
“I just have to work faster,” Ms. Tran said. “The phones are ringing, people are lining up, they’re demanding to know why they’re not getting benefits.”
Ms. Tran and other social workers said many suburbanites, who were living comfortably not long ago, were upset that they now had to beg for help.
“Sometimes they get angry and then they apologize,” said Ms. Tran, who said she had counseled many people who had started crying. “I just tell them: ‘I understand. It’s not your fault.’ ”
Other caseworkers say they feel guilty that they cannot spend enough time on clients. Ebony Martin, 32, said that four years ago, when she came to the DuPage County office, she had a caseload of about 900. Today she has more than 2,300 cases.
“I made a color-coded chart that tells me these are the people that I must — absolutely must — get to today,” Ms. Martin said.
Kara Murphy, the executive director of Access DuPage, a nonprofit group that helps uninsured people find health care, said enrollment in the program had jumped 55 percent in the last two years, to about 11,600.
The sharp increase in the need for services has strained the social infrastructure in suburban areas like DuPage County, which for a long time served chiefly as bedroom communities for prosperous commuters and their families. DuPage County, which has nearly one million residents, is the region’s second-most-populous county, after Cook. It has the area’s highest median household income, more than $73,000, according to a 2007 report by the Heartland Alliance. The unemployment rate has grown to nearly 9 percent in 2010, nearly triple the rate of the early 1990s, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Services for the working poor and the jobless can be scarce in the suburbs. Candace King, executive director of the DuPage Federation on Human Services Reform, said cities provided more programs to address poverty, like health clinics and food pantries. Housing costs tend to be higher in the suburbs, Ms. King said, and it can be difficult to rely on the smaller mass transit system.
“It is far better to be poor in Chicago than poor in DuPage,” she said.
Human Services officials say the 60 percent growth in caseload in DuPage County in five years has far outpaced the statewide increase of about 20 percent.
At a time when the suburbs have an increased need for programs for the poor, Ms. King said the state was so broke it could not afford to offer new services in places like DuPage County. “We’re trying desperately to keep the ones that are here alive,” she said.
Ms. King estimated that 15 percent of the county’s families earned less than $44,000 but more than the federal poverty level of $22,000. She said it is within that earnings range where aid organizations see families struggle. These people have “too much to get help, but not enough to get by,” she said.
Despite the dearth of social programs in DuPage County, many poor people have been leaving the city for the suburbs, according to demographers like Kenneth Johnson, a former Loyola University sociologist now at the University of New Hampshire. In many cases, parents of small children say they left Chicago to flee gangs.
LaTanya Chase, 28, grew up on the South Side of Chicago, but moved to the Austin neighborhood before settling in Glendale Heights four years ago. Ms. Chase, who works 24 to 30 hours a week at a CVS drugstore, learned quickly that she could not depend on suburban mass transit and would need a car.
But it was still worth moving to the suburbs, she said, because she does not have to worry about her 8-year-old daughter being caught in gang cross-fire while playing in the front yard.
“I’m here because I was looking for a better place for a child to grow up,” said Ms. Chase, who goes to the Villa Park office for food stamps and a health-care voucher. “It’s as simple as that.”
The growing racial and ethnic diversity in DuPage County are changing the clichés about white havens for the country-club set. Census Bureau figures show particularly strong growth among Hispanics, about 12 percent of the county’s population in 2008, up from 9 percent in 2000.
Officials at the Human Services office in Villa Park say its caseload of people who speak Spanish as a primary language has doubled, to about 15,000, over the past five years.
Joshua Drucker, a professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said the collapse of the home-building industry has hit Hispanics especially hard. Many Hispanic men do drywall and roofing work. Those jobs, Mr. Drucker said, which paid relatively well, have largely evaporated in the last two to three years.
The collapse of housing jobs sent Graciela Martinez, 37, to the Human Services waiting room with her four young children to receive food stamps. Much of the talking for the family was done by her oldest child, Amel — “I’m almost 8” — who wore a University of Wisconsin T-shirt and said he wanted to be a doctor.
Ms. Martinez said her fiancé, the father of the children, was a roofer whose work hours had shrunk to almost nothing. It became impossible to pay the rent, she said, so the family moved in with her sister in suburban West Chicago, an old railroad town with perhaps the longest-standing Mexican-American community in DuPage County.
One recent day at the Human Services office, people stood at the back of the long line on an asphalt parking lot that was baking in the sun. Later, when the skies darkened and the heavens opened, some people pushed inside to keep dry; others simply stood in the rain.
Ms. Baxter, the administrator, said the sense of despair among the clients could be heartbreaking.
“We’ve got to be able to give them some hope,” said Ms. Baxter, who sat behind a beige metal desk piled high with case forms. On the bulletin board, she had pinned the phrase, “Thy will, not mine, be done.”
“You see a lot of shame and embarrassment,” she said. “You see it with people who used to have money and now they’re maybe losing everything. And you see the shame in people who have always been dirt poor, too.”
She said she told caseworkers to give people time to work through their emotions. “I know we’re in a hurry,” she said, “but we’ve got to give them time to talk it out.”
She shook her head and lifted her eyes.
“Because they’re hurting,” she said. “And they’re so scared.”
Jon Burge to Take the Stand
This story came from the Chicago News Cooperative blog, Dateline: Chicago. I spent the day in court filling in for my co-worker, Katie Fretland. Early next week I will try to attend and cover the trial's verdict.
By RACHEL CROMIDAS
June 16, 2010
An attorney investigating allegations of police torture under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge gave testimony Wednesday that contradicts earlier statements from a Cook County Commissioner. The defense plans to call Burge to the stand Thursday.
Attorney Thomas J. Reed testified that Commissioner Larry Suffredin did not recall any abuse allegations when the two spoke in 2005. Suffredin, who was the public defender for alleged torture victim Anthony Holmes, testified earlier in the trial that Holmes told him he had been tortured.
“Mr. Suffredin told me he could not recall any allegations of abuse,” made by Anthony Holmes, Reed testified. Reed said that Holmes’ other former lawyer, William Murphy, did not recall any allegations of abuse during their interview. Reed did not keep any notes from the interviews.
On May 27, Suffredin testified that Holmes, a former high-ranking member of the Black Gangster Disciples, told him through sobs that he had been shocked with electricity and smothered with a plastic bag by Area 2 police trying to force a murder confession in 1973. Suffredin did not file a motion to suppress Holmes’ confession in the original case.
Reed interviewed Suffredin and Murphy as part of a special prosecutor’s investigation into claims of police torture, abuse and brutality under Burge’s watch from 1971 to 1983 Area 2.
The defense brought in two expert witnesses to address allegations that Andrew Wilson, convicted of killing two Area 2 police officers in February of 1982, was electrocuted and burned by a radiator in an Area 2 office while in custody.
Timothy Powell, an operating engineer for the City of Chicago, said the radiators on the second floor of the Burnside Community Center at 9059 S. Cottage Grove, which was once the Area 2 offices, are 2.5 inches apart. The marks on Wilson’s chest were closer together.
Michael Baden, a New York-based physician, forensic pathologist and medical examiner who was paid close to $27,000 to be an expert witness at the trial, said the marks on Wilson’s chest and face featured in the government’s photographic evidence could not have been caused by the radiator. The chest marks were too close together, too old and already scarring by the time the pictures were taken to have been caused within the previous three days, he said.
However, Baden did agree that the injury on Wilson’s thigh was a 2nd degree burn and could have been caused by contact with a radiator, even through the fabric of Wilson’s pants. Baden also agreed that Wilson’s ears exhibited puncture wounds that may have been caused be an alligator clip, but that it was not likely that the alligator clips had been electrified. “There would be burns on his ears,” he said.
Prosecuter David Weisman then had an alligator clip placed on his ear to demonstrate that such clips could stick to part of an individual ear without additional support after Baden speculated that it could not. Just “don’t hook it up to an electrical current,” Baden joked.
A Cook County State’s Attorney who took a homicide confession from an alleged police torture vicitim testified Wednesday that the man said he was treated well by police.
On October 30, 1983, shortly before 2 a.m., Dean Bastounes, now an attorney in private practice in Chicago, answered a police call to Area 2 to take a confession from Gregory Banks, who had been in custody since Oct. 28. (Police are allowed to hold a suspect in custody without charges for a maximum of 72 hours.) Banks testified earlier in the trial that he was tortured by Area 2 police.
“I asked him how he’d been treated by the police. Have you been treated well? ‘Yeah, I been treated well,’ he said.” Banks also said he was given coffee, according to Bastounes.
Bastounes then called a court reporter, Michael Hartman, to record Banks’ statements. According to the court report, which Bastounes read for the jury, Banks told him and Hartman that before the shooting happened, “We was gonna commit a robbery.” He and an accomplice crouched in bushes before Banks jumped a number of passersby and fired his gun. He then ran to 56 West 95th St. and hid the gun on the roof of the building. According to the report, Banks revealed where the gun was hidden to police officers when he was arrested. He told Hartman and Bastounes that he was not forced, coerced, or bribed by police officers to obtain his confession.
When asked if he trusted what the police officers had told him about the crime, Bastounes said his policy is, “Trust but verify. If the police told me something I couldn’t substantiate,” he said, he would ask for more evidence. Bastounes said he did not ask to see the gun or fingerprints as evidence in Banks’ case.
“I think it was fair to say that we [state’s attorneys in the felony review unit] would trust the police,” he said. Bastounes said he never “felt the need” to speak to Banks privately during the interview, and noticed nothing remarkable about Banks’ demeanor during the interview. Banks’ arms, back and legs were covered by a long sleeve shirt and pants.
“I guess common sense would tell me that if someone had been beaten I would tell them they had the right to remain silent. Maybe someone would blurt out ‘I’ve been beaten!’, maybe they wouldn’t.” Bastounes said no one had ever suggested to him that they had been the subject of police abuse.
The second witness of the day, Kathleen Warnick, who also worked as an Assistant States Attorney in the early 1980s’, testified that she visited Area 2 on Feb. 14, 1982 to assist her supervisors in obtaining a court reports on the shooting of two police officers. Warnick denied witnessing any violent acts or screams of horror while in Area 2. She said didn’t see Andrew Wilson or Jackie Wilson being taken out of the building.
Katie Fretland contributed reporting
By RACHEL CROMIDAS
June 16, 2010
An attorney investigating allegations of police torture under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge gave testimony Wednesday that contradicts earlier statements from a Cook County Commissioner. The defense plans to call Burge to the stand Thursday.
Attorney Thomas J. Reed testified that Commissioner Larry Suffredin did not recall any abuse allegations when the two spoke in 2005. Suffredin, who was the public defender for alleged torture victim Anthony Holmes, testified earlier in the trial that Holmes told him he had been tortured.
“Mr. Suffredin told me he could not recall any allegations of abuse,” made by Anthony Holmes, Reed testified. Reed said that Holmes’ other former lawyer, William Murphy, did not recall any allegations of abuse during their interview. Reed did not keep any notes from the interviews.
On May 27, Suffredin testified that Holmes, a former high-ranking member of the Black Gangster Disciples, told him through sobs that he had been shocked with electricity and smothered with a plastic bag by Area 2 police trying to force a murder confession in 1973. Suffredin did not file a motion to suppress Holmes’ confession in the original case.
Reed interviewed Suffredin and Murphy as part of a special prosecutor’s investigation into claims of police torture, abuse and brutality under Burge’s watch from 1971 to 1983 Area 2.
The defense brought in two expert witnesses to address allegations that Andrew Wilson, convicted of killing two Area 2 police officers in February of 1982, was electrocuted and burned by a radiator in an Area 2 office while in custody.
Timothy Powell, an operating engineer for the City of Chicago, said the radiators on the second floor of the Burnside Community Center at 9059 S. Cottage Grove, which was once the Area 2 offices, are 2.5 inches apart. The marks on Wilson’s chest were closer together.
Michael Baden, a New York-based physician, forensic pathologist and medical examiner who was paid close to $27,000 to be an expert witness at the trial, said the marks on Wilson’s chest and face featured in the government’s photographic evidence could not have been caused by the radiator. The chest marks were too close together, too old and already scarring by the time the pictures were taken to have been caused within the previous three days, he said.
However, Baden did agree that the injury on Wilson’s thigh was a 2nd degree burn and could have been caused by contact with a radiator, even through the fabric of Wilson’s pants. Baden also agreed that Wilson’s ears exhibited puncture wounds that may have been caused be an alligator clip, but that it was not likely that the alligator clips had been electrified. “There would be burns on his ears,” he said.
Prosecuter David Weisman then had an alligator clip placed on his ear to demonstrate that such clips could stick to part of an individual ear without additional support after Baden speculated that it could not. Just “don’t hook it up to an electrical current,” Baden joked.
A Cook County State’s Attorney who took a homicide confession from an alleged police torture vicitim testified Wednesday that the man said he was treated well by police.
On October 30, 1983, shortly before 2 a.m., Dean Bastounes, now an attorney in private practice in Chicago, answered a police call to Area 2 to take a confession from Gregory Banks, who had been in custody since Oct. 28. (Police are allowed to hold a suspect in custody without charges for a maximum of 72 hours.) Banks testified earlier in the trial that he was tortured by Area 2 police.
“I asked him how he’d been treated by the police. Have you been treated well? ‘Yeah, I been treated well,’ he said.” Banks also said he was given coffee, according to Bastounes.
Bastounes then called a court reporter, Michael Hartman, to record Banks’ statements. According to the court report, which Bastounes read for the jury, Banks told him and Hartman that before the shooting happened, “We was gonna commit a robbery.” He and an accomplice crouched in bushes before Banks jumped a number of passersby and fired his gun. He then ran to 56 West 95th St. and hid the gun on the roof of the building. According to the report, Banks revealed where the gun was hidden to police officers when he was arrested. He told Hartman and Bastounes that he was not forced, coerced, or bribed by police officers to obtain his confession.
When asked if he trusted what the police officers had told him about the crime, Bastounes said his policy is, “Trust but verify. If the police told me something I couldn’t substantiate,” he said, he would ask for more evidence. Bastounes said he did not ask to see the gun or fingerprints as evidence in Banks’ case.
“I think it was fair to say that we [state’s attorneys in the felony review unit] would trust the police,” he said. Bastounes said he never “felt the need” to speak to Banks privately during the interview, and noticed nothing remarkable about Banks’ demeanor during the interview. Banks’ arms, back and legs were covered by a long sleeve shirt and pants.
“I guess common sense would tell me that if someone had been beaten I would tell them they had the right to remain silent. Maybe someone would blurt out ‘I’ve been beaten!’, maybe they wouldn’t.” Bastounes said no one had ever suggested to him that they had been the subject of police abuse.
The second witness of the day, Kathleen Warnick, who also worked as an Assistant States Attorney in the early 1980s’, testified that she visited Area 2 on Feb. 14, 1982 to assist her supervisors in obtaining a court reports on the shooting of two police officers. Warnick denied witnessing any violent acts or screams of horror while in Area 2. She said didn’t see Andrew Wilson or Jackie Wilson being taken out of the building.
Katie Fretland contributed reporting
Friday, June 11, 2010
Building Bridges (From the College Site)
My latest story up on the College site:
Second-year Caitlyn Kearney knows the challenges of town-gown relations firsthand. As one of the founding administrative coordinators for the Woodlawn Collaborative (WLC), a burgeoning community center located inside Woodlawn’s First Presbyterian Church, Kearney works to expand University of Chicago students’ roles in neighboring communities.
This is the mission of WLC, a center where activist and public service groups from inside and outside the University community can come together. The organization is three years in the making, according to Wallace Goode, director of the University Community Service Center.
“WLC has brought the church a whole new level of life and energy because it fills a space that used to be fairly empty,” Goode said. The church’s building “was sorely under-used. They once had a food pantry and a pre-school with over a hundred kids enrolled in it.”
Goode expects the student leaders behind Woodlawn Collaborative to help restore that vitality to a neighborhood that suffers from a lack of retail outlets and community spaces.
“Imagine Art in Action on steroids,” said Goode, referring to the annual spring block party run by members of the South Side Solidarity Network. “That’s what WLC could be, but it is much more challenging to sustain activity in that space year-round.”
So far, WLC hosts an Open Mic Series that runs on the third Friday of every month, a Print Studio, and several youth programs, including a free music school led by second-year Noah Moskowitz. In addition to planning regular events and classes in the church, WLC’s student leaders are in charge of the minutiae of running a community center, from securing funding and insurance to ensuring safety in the space.
“This is a project that really represents students trying to be truly appreciative of our neighboring communities,” Kearney said. “We don’t have all the answers, but there’s a lot that both [the University and Woodlawn residents] can bring to the table.”
On a more personal level, “this is the most educational, real-world experience I’ve received [at the University],” she added. “It gives me so much confidence to work on this project and see things start to come together. And at the same time I’m getting out of the U. of C. bubble.”
Kearney has been tutoring elementary school students in the Woodlawn community since her first year. She joined WLC out of a desire to make her relationship with the neighborhood more than a string of one-time commitments.
Third-year Cat Greim echoed Kearney’s enthusiasm about branching out from typical on-campus activities, especially in the face of historic University-Woodlawn tensions.
“I love getting to work with some people who live in Woodlawn in a really collaborative way. I think WLC has been different because it is in our mission and goal to be that way.”
Maya Elliott, a member of WLC and a Woodlawn resident for the past four years, says that getting to know the University students has been one of the highlights of working with WLC. Elliott said students bring a fresh eye to community issues, but that there is still much to learn about what is important to the neighborhood.
“We all come from such different backgrounds and different perspectives on things, so it’s always good to get their perspective, and for them to hear ours, too,” she said.
Second-year Caitlyn Kearney knows the challenges of town-gown relations firsthand. As one of the founding administrative coordinators for the Woodlawn Collaborative (WLC), a burgeoning community center located inside Woodlawn’s First Presbyterian Church, Kearney works to expand University of Chicago students’ roles in neighboring communities.
This is the mission of WLC, a center where activist and public service groups from inside and outside the University community can come together. The organization is three years in the making, according to Wallace Goode, director of the University Community Service Center.
“WLC has brought the church a whole new level of life and energy because it fills a space that used to be fairly empty,” Goode said. The church’s building “was sorely under-used. They once had a food pantry and a pre-school with over a hundred kids enrolled in it.”
Goode expects the student leaders behind Woodlawn Collaborative to help restore that vitality to a neighborhood that suffers from a lack of retail outlets and community spaces.
“Imagine Art in Action on steroids,” said Goode, referring to the annual spring block party run by members of the South Side Solidarity Network. “That’s what WLC could be, but it is much more challenging to sustain activity in that space year-round.”
So far, WLC hosts an Open Mic Series that runs on the third Friday of every month, a Print Studio, and several youth programs, including a free music school led by second-year Noah Moskowitz. In addition to planning regular events and classes in the church, WLC’s student leaders are in charge of the minutiae of running a community center, from securing funding and insurance to ensuring safety in the space.
“This is a project that really represents students trying to be truly appreciative of our neighboring communities,” Kearney said. “We don’t have all the answers, but there’s a lot that both [the University and Woodlawn residents] can bring to the table.”
On a more personal level, “this is the most educational, real-world experience I’ve received [at the University],” she added. “It gives me so much confidence to work on this project and see things start to come together. And at the same time I’m getting out of the U. of C. bubble.”
Kearney has been tutoring elementary school students in the Woodlawn community since her first year. She joined WLC out of a desire to make her relationship with the neighborhood more than a string of one-time commitments.
Third-year Cat Greim echoed Kearney’s enthusiasm about branching out from typical on-campus activities, especially in the face of historic University-Woodlawn tensions.
“I love getting to work with some people who live in Woodlawn in a really collaborative way. I think WLC has been different because it is in our mission and goal to be that way.”
Maya Elliott, a member of WLC and a Woodlawn resident for the past four years, says that getting to know the University students has been one of the highlights of working with WLC. Elliott said students bring a fresh eye to community issues, but that there is still much to learn about what is important to the neighborhood.
“We all come from such different backgrounds and different perspectives on things, so it’s always good to get their perspective, and for them to hear ours, too,” she said.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Collegiate Scholars provides ‘college inspiration’
Another article of mine, this time from the University of Chicago News Office:
When first-year Fabiola Salazar started classes at the University of Chicago, she had already attended Humanities classes in Cobb Hall and science labs in the Biological Sciences Learning Center—and she knew her way around her dormitory like a returning student.
In a sense, she already was one; Salazar’s introduction to the campus came four years ago, when she enrolled in Collegiate Scholars—a University program that places high-achieving Chicago Public School students in summer classes with University professors on subjects ranging from hip-hop music to the Illinois political system, in addition to internships and college application workshops.
Inspired by College Life
Salazar said being exposed to college life as a sophomore in high school, while spending part of the summer in the Max Palevsky dormitory alongside college students, inspired her to make ambitious goals for her college career, including applying to the University. Now she is an economics major, and plans to pursue an MBA.
Salazar also arrived on campus with a friend: fourth-year Roderick Baker, who also graduated from the Collegiate Scholars Program.
“Being on campus and away from home is overwhelming,” Salazar said, “So for me Roderick was the helping hand that guided me through the ins and outs of the University. He’s teaching me what he wishes someone had told him as a first-year.”
Mentoring Relationships
Collegiate Scholars prides itself on the mentoring relationships that develop between alumni at colleges around the country, according to Kim Ransom, the program’s founding director.
“We’re able to create a community of diverse students who love learning that crosses racial, social, and economical lines.”
Ransom said the program, which fields nearly 700 applicants for 45 spots each year, is unique in its ability to connect these students with distinguished University professors like Paul Sally Jr. and Herman Sinaiko.
Top-College Bound
Collegiate Scholars “really gets students thinking, I’m not just going to a college, but to a top college, because I’m a top student,” Baker, a political sciences major, said.
Omar Mesina, a senior at Whitney Young Magnet High School, said he made sure to take as many science classes as possible while on campus.
“I want to go to medical school in the future, or pursue bio-chemistry—Collegiate Scholars as definitely allowed me to expand on that,” he said. Mesina took summer courses in chemistry and biology, and last summer studied Nutritional Science alongside University students in summer school.
“Collegiate Scholars really allowed me to take sciences beyond the scope of what was offered to me at my school,” he added. He expects this preparation will serve him well when he begins attending Harvard University in the fall.
David Williams, a senior at the University of Chicago Charter School in Woodlawn, said the value of the program extends far beyond campus, from an East Coast college tour to cultural outings to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He plans to study Philosophy and Psychology at Carleton College.
Williams, who attended the programs first-ever college tour, said the experience was unmatchable. “We went to New York and saw Hairspray [the musical]. We went to Time Square. It was ridiculous.”
When first-year Fabiola Salazar started classes at the University of Chicago, she had already attended Humanities classes in Cobb Hall and science labs in the Biological Sciences Learning Center—and she knew her way around her dormitory like a returning student.
In a sense, she already was one; Salazar’s introduction to the campus came four years ago, when she enrolled in Collegiate Scholars—a University program that places high-achieving Chicago Public School students in summer classes with University professors on subjects ranging from hip-hop music to the Illinois political system, in addition to internships and college application workshops.
Inspired by College Life
Salazar said being exposed to college life as a sophomore in high school, while spending part of the summer in the Max Palevsky dormitory alongside college students, inspired her to make ambitious goals for her college career, including applying to the University. Now she is an economics major, and plans to pursue an MBA.
Salazar also arrived on campus with a friend: fourth-year Roderick Baker, who also graduated from the Collegiate Scholars Program.
“Being on campus and away from home is overwhelming,” Salazar said, “So for me Roderick was the helping hand that guided me through the ins and outs of the University. He’s teaching me what he wishes someone had told him as a first-year.”
Mentoring Relationships
Collegiate Scholars prides itself on the mentoring relationships that develop between alumni at colleges around the country, according to Kim Ransom, the program’s founding director.
“We’re able to create a community of diverse students who love learning that crosses racial, social, and economical lines.”
Ransom said the program, which fields nearly 700 applicants for 45 spots each year, is unique in its ability to connect these students with distinguished University professors like Paul Sally Jr. and Herman Sinaiko.
Top-College Bound
Collegiate Scholars “really gets students thinking, I’m not just going to a college, but to a top college, because I’m a top student,” Baker, a political sciences major, said.
Omar Mesina, a senior at Whitney Young Magnet High School, said he made sure to take as many science classes as possible while on campus.
“I want to go to medical school in the future, or pursue bio-chemistry—Collegiate Scholars as definitely allowed me to expand on that,” he said. Mesina took summer courses in chemistry and biology, and last summer studied Nutritional Science alongside University students in summer school.
“Collegiate Scholars really allowed me to take sciences beyond the scope of what was offered to me at my school,” he added. He expects this preparation will serve him well when he begins attending Harvard University in the fall.
David Williams, a senior at the University of Chicago Charter School in Woodlawn, said the value of the program extends far beyond campus, from an East Coast college tour to cultural outings to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He plans to study Philosophy and Psychology at Carleton College.
Williams, who attended the programs first-ever college tour, said the experience was unmatchable. “We went to New York and saw Hairspray [the musical]. We went to Time Square. It was ridiculous.”
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
A Fresh Oasis Thrives in a Chicago Food Desert
My latest article at the Chicago News Cooperative, published in Sunday's New York Times.
Willie Montgomery and his well-worn Ford Crown Victoria have become an unlikely sign of progress in solving Chicago’s long-standing problem of so-called food deserts.
Mr. Montgomery charges grocery shoppers up to $8 for rides home from the Food 4 Less, a full-service grocery store that opened four years ago in Englewood. He rests on a handicap cart at the front of the store, waiting for cashiers to send him shoppers who traveled there without a car.
Mr. Montgomery, a retiree who will not give his age, said patrons rode with him because they did not want to worry about having their grocery bags stolen on the bus, and because they couldn’t buy what they needed from corner stores closer to home. They live in food deserts, poor areas that are dotted with vacant lots, dollar stores, and liquor marts, but bereft of fresh-food grocers.
“Shopping at a corner store is too expensive,” said Shirley Slatton, a student at nearby Kennedy-King College, who had piled a half-dozen bags of food and toiletries into the trunk of Mr. Montgomery’s car. “And they don’t sell stuff every day, so you have to check the dates on the cans to make sure you get fresh items.”
When food deserts became a public-policy issue five years ago, few retailers had developed big stores in poor neighborhoods. Chad Broughton, a researcher at the University of Chicago, said shoppers felt getting to the stores would take too long and be unsafe. Although a few grocers have opened in city food deserts, it is still common for Chicagoans in some rough neighborhoods to travel several miles to buy produce.
But steady traffic and revenues at the 63,000-square-foot Food 4 Less at 7030 South Ashland Avenue — as well as Mr. Montgomery’s thriving transportation business — are providing city officials and researchers with new clues about how far residents are willing to travel to stores and how much grocery chains are willing to spend to do business in poor neighborhoods.
Food 4 Less’s foray into Englewood also adds a new dimension to the political debate surrounding Wal-Mart’s effort to build a second store within city limits. The giant retailer has submitted proposals for stores in Pullman Park and Chatham on the South Side, but those efforts have been stalled by negotiations with labor unions, which want workers to be paid more than the minimum wage.
Mr. Broughton, a senior lecturer at the university who just released a survey of food access in four South Side neighborhoods, including Englewood, said that the ideal grocery store for food-desert residents is a large, chain supermarket, because such stores can stock fresh food more readily than corner stores, and at lower prices.
“For residents the obvious answer is a big supermarket with inexpensive items and more variety,” he said. If fresh produce does not sell before it rots, he added, “then it’s not profitable, and there isn’t much incentive for corner stores to stock it.”
But some community organizers balk at seeing profits and better-paying jobs leave their neighborhoods.
“To get into the grocery industry is probably one of the hardest things to do,” said LaDonna Redmond, an urban farmer and founder of the Graffiti and Grub restaurant and community center in East Englewood. “Aldi can purchase food and sell it for pennies on the dollar. Myself, if I open a grocery store, I can’t move that kind of volume.”
Ms. Redmond is a proponent of efforts to make fresh food more available, like accepting food stamps at farmers’ markets and providing grants to help corner stores stock fresh produce.
“If we have entrepreneurs from the community working with the community, I think we’d see something a little bit different,” Ms. Redmond said.
As one of only two full-service grocery stores within the nine square miles of greater Englewood — whose borders extend from 55th Street south to 75th Street, and from Western Avenue east to State Street — the Food 4 Less benefits and suffers from doing business in a food and retail desert. The store boasts the third-highest profit margin of the 15 Food 4 Less outlets in the Chicago region, but also has the highest security expenses, said Carrie Cole, the store director.
Englewood is one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. In East Englewood, 43.8 percent of residents live below the federal poverty level, according to the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission. In West Englewood, 32.1 percent live below the poverty level. The Chicago Police Department ranks East Englewood sixth and West Englewood eighth in robberies among city community areas.
Safety concerns “limit the window in which people can feel comfortable going out and getting food if they don’t have a car,” Mr. Broughton said. “People will re-arrange their work schedules just so that they can have a window during a safe time of day to get food.”
But Ms. Cole said the relative success of the store sends a message that it can pay to develop in Chicago’s low-income communities, which generally suffer most from a lack of fresh-food grocers. The store opened almost four years ago, and was followed by an Aldi store at 76th Street and Western Avenue.
“A lot of these stores do quite well because there’s not a lot of competition,” said Mari Gallagher, a food policy consultant and researcher who wrote a landmark study on Chicago food access in 2006 and a follow-up study in 2009. But the majority of areas labeled as food deserts by Ms. Gallagher’s study do not mirror Englewood’s growth.
“These stores are really important for public health,” Ms. Gallagher said, particularly because residents of communities without green grocers have higher risks of developing heart disease, cancer and kidney failure. “But the grocer has to make a profit, too.” She said the key for the city will be understanding what is going to help make the market place stronger and attract other types of stores.
The Englewood Food 4 Less sees close to 19,000 customers per week, Ms. Cole said, and each spends an average of $30 per visit. Those numbers have remained steady despite the recession. Although the company’s corporate office did not respond to questions about average store traffic in the Chicago area, four other Food 4 Less outlets in various city neighborhoods said they attracted between 16,000 and 20,000 customers a week.
Ms. Cole said that her store had done well because more people shop at discount food marts in hard times. “The recession has done us a lot of justice,” she said. “We’re probably one of the only chains to have seen an increase in sales.”
That is encouraging for the city, which has been financing new programs to increase fresh-food options in food deserts since Ms. Gallagher’s research group released its study on the correlation between residents’ health risks and distance from grocery stores, said Chris Raguso, acting commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Community Development.
The department has been giving grocers “every incentive we possibly can,” she said, to develop in these blighted areas by waiving required commercial inspections and streamlining the process for them to request building permits.
“It’s no secret that it’s an economic issue for grocery stores,” she said, “and it takes a long time to bring these large-scale developments into order.”
Willie Montgomery and his well-worn Ford Crown Victoria have become an unlikely sign of progress in solving Chicago’s long-standing problem of so-called food deserts.
Mr. Montgomery charges grocery shoppers up to $8 for rides home from the Food 4 Less, a full-service grocery store that opened four years ago in Englewood. He rests on a handicap cart at the front of the store, waiting for cashiers to send him shoppers who traveled there without a car.
Mr. Montgomery, a retiree who will not give his age, said patrons rode with him because they did not want to worry about having their grocery bags stolen on the bus, and because they couldn’t buy what they needed from corner stores closer to home. They live in food deserts, poor areas that are dotted with vacant lots, dollar stores, and liquor marts, but bereft of fresh-food grocers.
“Shopping at a corner store is too expensive,” said Shirley Slatton, a student at nearby Kennedy-King College, who had piled a half-dozen bags of food and toiletries into the trunk of Mr. Montgomery’s car. “And they don’t sell stuff every day, so you have to check the dates on the cans to make sure you get fresh items.”
When food deserts became a public-policy issue five years ago, few retailers had developed big stores in poor neighborhoods. Chad Broughton, a researcher at the University of Chicago, said shoppers felt getting to the stores would take too long and be unsafe. Although a few grocers have opened in city food deserts, it is still common for Chicagoans in some rough neighborhoods to travel several miles to buy produce.
But steady traffic and revenues at the 63,000-square-foot Food 4 Less at 7030 South Ashland Avenue — as well as Mr. Montgomery’s thriving transportation business — are providing city officials and researchers with new clues about how far residents are willing to travel to stores and how much grocery chains are willing to spend to do business in poor neighborhoods.
Food 4 Less’s foray into Englewood also adds a new dimension to the political debate surrounding Wal-Mart’s effort to build a second store within city limits. The giant retailer has submitted proposals for stores in Pullman Park and Chatham on the South Side, but those efforts have been stalled by negotiations with labor unions, which want workers to be paid more than the minimum wage.
Mr. Broughton, a senior lecturer at the university who just released a survey of food access in four South Side neighborhoods, including Englewood, said that the ideal grocery store for food-desert residents is a large, chain supermarket, because such stores can stock fresh food more readily than corner stores, and at lower prices.
“For residents the obvious answer is a big supermarket with inexpensive items and more variety,” he said. If fresh produce does not sell before it rots, he added, “then it’s not profitable, and there isn’t much incentive for corner stores to stock it.”
But some community organizers balk at seeing profits and better-paying jobs leave their neighborhoods.
“To get into the grocery industry is probably one of the hardest things to do,” said LaDonna Redmond, an urban farmer and founder of the Graffiti and Grub restaurant and community center in East Englewood. “Aldi can purchase food and sell it for pennies on the dollar. Myself, if I open a grocery store, I can’t move that kind of volume.”
Ms. Redmond is a proponent of efforts to make fresh food more available, like accepting food stamps at farmers’ markets and providing grants to help corner stores stock fresh produce.
“If we have entrepreneurs from the community working with the community, I think we’d see something a little bit different,” Ms. Redmond said.
As one of only two full-service grocery stores within the nine square miles of greater Englewood — whose borders extend from 55th Street south to 75th Street, and from Western Avenue east to State Street — the Food 4 Less benefits and suffers from doing business in a food and retail desert. The store boasts the third-highest profit margin of the 15 Food 4 Less outlets in the Chicago region, but also has the highest security expenses, said Carrie Cole, the store director.
Englewood is one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. In East Englewood, 43.8 percent of residents live below the federal poverty level, according to the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission. In West Englewood, 32.1 percent live below the poverty level. The Chicago Police Department ranks East Englewood sixth and West Englewood eighth in robberies among city community areas.
Safety concerns “limit the window in which people can feel comfortable going out and getting food if they don’t have a car,” Mr. Broughton said. “People will re-arrange their work schedules just so that they can have a window during a safe time of day to get food.”
But Ms. Cole said the relative success of the store sends a message that it can pay to develop in Chicago’s low-income communities, which generally suffer most from a lack of fresh-food grocers. The store opened almost four years ago, and was followed by an Aldi store at 76th Street and Western Avenue.
“A lot of these stores do quite well because there’s not a lot of competition,” said Mari Gallagher, a food policy consultant and researcher who wrote a landmark study on Chicago food access in 2006 and a follow-up study in 2009. But the majority of areas labeled as food deserts by Ms. Gallagher’s study do not mirror Englewood’s growth.
“These stores are really important for public health,” Ms. Gallagher said, particularly because residents of communities without green grocers have higher risks of developing heart disease, cancer and kidney failure. “But the grocer has to make a profit, too.” She said the key for the city will be understanding what is going to help make the market place stronger and attract other types of stores.
The Englewood Food 4 Less sees close to 19,000 customers per week, Ms. Cole said, and each spends an average of $30 per visit. Those numbers have remained steady despite the recession. Although the company’s corporate office did not respond to questions about average store traffic in the Chicago area, four other Food 4 Less outlets in various city neighborhoods said they attracted between 16,000 and 20,000 customers a week.
Ms. Cole said that her store had done well because more people shop at discount food marts in hard times. “The recession has done us a lot of justice,” she said. “We’re probably one of the only chains to have seen an increase in sales.”
That is encouraging for the city, which has been financing new programs to increase fresh-food options in food deserts since Ms. Gallagher’s research group released its study on the correlation between residents’ health risks and distance from grocery stores, said Chris Raguso, acting commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Community Development.
The department has been giving grocers “every incentive we possibly can,” she said, to develop in these blighted areas by waiving required commercial inspections and streamlining the process for them to request building permits.
“It’s no secret that it’s an economic issue for grocery stores,” she said, “and it takes a long time to bring these large-scale developments into order.”
Monday, May 24, 2010
At Museum, ‘RoboSue’ Roars to Life
Up now on NYTimes.com, a story I helped my Chicago News Cooperative co-worker write. He's going to have an awesome TV piece tonight on WTTW about it!
By ASH-HAR QURAISHI and RACHEL CROMIDAS
The Field Museum of Natural History this week will open an exhibit that features a reincarnated Sue — the museum’s iconic Tyrannosaurus rex — as a lifelike animatronic creature that turns its head to track visitors’ movements and lets out a loud roar.
The exhibit, which opens Wednesday and runs through Sept. 6, celebrates the 10th anniversary of the museum’s debut of Sue, the largest and most complete T. rex fossil yet discovered. The imposing, and somewhat unsettling, replica was created by Kokoro, an animatronics company based in Tokyo, and KumoTek, a robotics company, based in Texas. (John Canning Jr., chairman of the board of the Chicago News Cooperative, is also the chairman of the board of the Field Museum.)
Hilary Sanders, the museum’s project manager for exhibitions, said that when she first saw the robotic dinosaur, called RoboSue, it “made my skin crawl.” Ms. Sanders said she was eager to see how children, only those 4 and older will be admitted, would react.
Matthew Fisher, the founder of KumoTek, said that when there is no one around, the robots are doing what appear to be random behaviors. “But once the target or the human comes into play,” he said, “then the robot immediately engages that person.”
Establishing how dinosaurs would move and react to humans was tricky, said Pete Makovicky, the curator for the Sue exhibit.
“It’s really hard to decipher behavior from the fossil record because behavior doesn’t usually leave a trace,” Mr. Makovicky said. “So when it comes to the individual actions of the dinosaurs in the exhibit, a lot more of that is based on the general study of how animals react — what is plausible given what we know about the anatomy and frame of a T. rex.”
Gabe Lyon, whose foundation teaches paleontology to students, said that the scientific accuracy of the animatronic model is doubtful. “They’re not going to tell us anything real about how dinosaurs behaved, any more than ‘Jurassic Park’ is going to tell us that dinosaurs hunted in packs,” he said.
Monica Post, the director of MPR Museum Consulting, said the “wow” factor of RoboSue may help draw more people into the learning experience that museums offer. “Today, we expect so much more. We are the X-Box generation,” Ms. Post said.
RoboSue is scaled to three-quarters the size of an adult T. Rex, which in Sue’s case is more than 40 feet long and 13 feet tall at the hip.
Sue, a 67-million year-old fossil discovered in 1990 near Faith, S.D., was purchased at a Sotheby’s auction in 1997 for $8.4 million.
By ASH-HAR QURAISHI and RACHEL CROMIDAS
The Field Museum of Natural History this week will open an exhibit that features a reincarnated Sue — the museum’s iconic Tyrannosaurus rex — as a lifelike animatronic creature that turns its head to track visitors’ movements and lets out a loud roar.
The exhibit, which opens Wednesday and runs through Sept. 6, celebrates the 10th anniversary of the museum’s debut of Sue, the largest and most complete T. rex fossil yet discovered. The imposing, and somewhat unsettling, replica was created by Kokoro, an animatronics company based in Tokyo, and KumoTek, a robotics company, based in Texas. (John Canning Jr., chairman of the board of the Chicago News Cooperative, is also the chairman of the board of the Field Museum.)
Hilary Sanders, the museum’s project manager for exhibitions, said that when she first saw the robotic dinosaur, called RoboSue, it “made my skin crawl.” Ms. Sanders said she was eager to see how children, only those 4 and older will be admitted, would react.
Matthew Fisher, the founder of KumoTek, said that when there is no one around, the robots are doing what appear to be random behaviors. “But once the target or the human comes into play,” he said, “then the robot immediately engages that person.”
Establishing how dinosaurs would move and react to humans was tricky, said Pete Makovicky, the curator for the Sue exhibit.
“It’s really hard to decipher behavior from the fossil record because behavior doesn’t usually leave a trace,” Mr. Makovicky said. “So when it comes to the individual actions of the dinosaurs in the exhibit, a lot more of that is based on the general study of how animals react — what is plausible given what we know about the anatomy and frame of a T. rex.”
Gabe Lyon, whose foundation teaches paleontology to students, said that the scientific accuracy of the animatronic model is doubtful. “They’re not going to tell us anything real about how dinosaurs behaved, any more than ‘Jurassic Park’ is going to tell us that dinosaurs hunted in packs,” he said.
Monica Post, the director of MPR Museum Consulting, said the “wow” factor of RoboSue may help draw more people into the learning experience that museums offer. “Today, we expect so much more. We are the X-Box generation,” Ms. Post said.
RoboSue is scaled to three-quarters the size of an adult T. Rex, which in Sue’s case is more than 40 feet long and 13 feet tall at the hip.
Sue, a 67-million year-old fossil discovered in 1990 near Faith, S.D., was purchased at a Sotheby’s auction in 1997 for $8.4 million.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Troll 2, Mr. Vampire bring students together Sunday nights
My latest article is up on the University of Chicago Arts Page:
Residents of Snell-Hitchcock take part in a decade-long tradition called Bad Movie Night.
Among the residents of Snell-Hitchcock Hall, third-year Mandy Stafford is the girl with the endless mental catalogue of some of the worst movies ever produced. She uses this knowledge to preside over a decade-old tradition known as Bad Movie Night.
Stafford screens a film every Sunday night in Snell-Hitchcock’s Rec Room; though they are no cinematic masterpieces, for her and the 10 to 20 students who gather for the event, they are far from a waste of time.
“The point is once a week everyone can just do something stupid,” says Stafford. “I don’t think that’s something people get to do enough at this school.”
First-year Jen Woolley agrees. “They’re so bad that they’re good to watch,” she says. “Some people bring schoolwork; I knit.”
Stafford’s choices range from the fantastical to the truly absurd. Upcoming screenings include Troll 2 and Mr. Vampire.
Second-year Levi Foster, who stopped by for the showing of High School Musical, 2, quips in here: “Wait a minute, Mr. Vampire is a legitimately good movie. It’s campy as hell, but a legitimately good movie.”
One subject of debate among the group of regular viewers is what makes a movie “bad.” Twilight and High School Musical, for example, were box-office hits; but neither escaped Stafford’s bad movie line-up. “They’re both bad enough to be funny, and that’s important for bad movie night. Some movies are literally unwatchably bad, and we don’t screen those. The favorites year after year are the ones that people find quirky and ridiculous.”
Clearer rules govern the movie selection-process, which Stafford inherited from Margot Spellman, AB ’08: The movies should be “earnestly bad,” she explains, unless “you can tell the film knows it’s bad, and yet still comes out even worse than [the directors] intended—like Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.”
In contrast, “there’s Plan 9 from Outer Space. The director thinks it was the greatest thing ever committed to film, but it was just awful.”
There’s also Wild Zero, a film Stafford struggles to summarize concisely: “Aliens turn everyone in the world into zombies. The protagonist is the biggest fan of the band Guitar Wolf. Does that make sense?”
The answer doesn’t matter, as long as the film has achieved a necessary combination of unintentional humor and notoriety. But Stafford does have her limits:
“One movie I refused to play this [school] year was the Star Wars Holiday Special. People always come out to it en masse, but it is just an abomination. Truly the most horrifying thing ever committed to film.”
Stafford speculates that Bad Movie Night has remained a dorm tradition because it is low-commitment, and convenient. “You just come to a movie at 10 p.m. on Sunday in the Rec Room, and it’s been like that since the beginning. Week nights are hard nights to hold events because people are actually doing homework, and on Friday and Saturday people want to go out in the city.”
Residents of Snell-Hitchcock take part in a decade-long tradition called Bad Movie Night.
Among the residents of Snell-Hitchcock Hall, third-year Mandy Stafford is the girl with the endless mental catalogue of some of the worst movies ever produced. She uses this knowledge to preside over a decade-old tradition known as Bad Movie Night.
Stafford screens a film every Sunday night in Snell-Hitchcock’s Rec Room; though they are no cinematic masterpieces, for her and the 10 to 20 students who gather for the event, they are far from a waste of time.
“The point is once a week everyone can just do something stupid,” says Stafford. “I don’t think that’s something people get to do enough at this school.”
First-year Jen Woolley agrees. “They’re so bad that they’re good to watch,” she says. “Some people bring schoolwork; I knit.”
Stafford’s choices range from the fantastical to the truly absurd. Upcoming screenings include Troll 2 and Mr. Vampire.
Second-year Levi Foster, who stopped by for the showing of High School Musical, 2, quips in here: “Wait a minute, Mr. Vampire is a legitimately good movie. It’s campy as hell, but a legitimately good movie.”
One subject of debate among the group of regular viewers is what makes a movie “bad.” Twilight and High School Musical, for example, were box-office hits; but neither escaped Stafford’s bad movie line-up. “They’re both bad enough to be funny, and that’s important for bad movie night. Some movies are literally unwatchably bad, and we don’t screen those. The favorites year after year are the ones that people find quirky and ridiculous.”
Clearer rules govern the movie selection-process, which Stafford inherited from Margot Spellman, AB ’08: The movies should be “earnestly bad,” she explains, unless “you can tell the film knows it’s bad, and yet still comes out even worse than [the directors] intended—like Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.”
In contrast, “there’s Plan 9 from Outer Space. The director thinks it was the greatest thing ever committed to film, but it was just awful.”
There’s also Wild Zero, a film Stafford struggles to summarize concisely: “Aliens turn everyone in the world into zombies. The protagonist is the biggest fan of the band Guitar Wolf. Does that make sense?”
The answer doesn’t matter, as long as the film has achieved a necessary combination of unintentional humor and notoriety. But Stafford does have her limits:
“One movie I refused to play this [school] year was the Star Wars Holiday Special. People always come out to it en masse, but it is just an abomination. Truly the most horrifying thing ever committed to film.”
Stafford speculates that Bad Movie Night has remained a dorm tradition because it is low-commitment, and convenient. “You just come to a movie at 10 p.m. on Sunday in the Rec Room, and it’s been like that since the beginning. Week nights are hard nights to hold events because people are actually doing homework, and on Friday and Saturday people want to go out in the city.”
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Pilsen Railroad Strike Will Be Re-Enacted
By RACHEL CROMIDAS
Published: May 2, 2010 in the New York Times
Paul Durica wears many guises as a historical tour guide to such places as Haymarket Square and the Kenwood haunts of the 1924 thrill killers Leopold and Loeb. On Sunday he and a group of historians-turned-artists will re-enact the 1877 scene of a Pilsen railroad strike and a clash between laborers and the Chicago police.
Related
A staging of the Battle of the Halsted Viaduct will take place at 3 p.m. on the corner of South Halsted and West 16th Streets. Attendees will be invited to participate as mobsters and policemen, said Mr. Durica, the founder of the irreverent Pocket Guide to Hell Tours and a graduate student at the University of Chicago.
Period dress is encouraged, and a horse-drawn carriage, live music and foam bricks - in case the audience gets rowdy - will be provided, Mr. Durica said. The free event concludes the Version Festival, a springtime convergence of local artists and musicians that is in its 10th year.
Published: May 2, 2010 in the New York Times
Paul Durica wears many guises as a historical tour guide to such places as Haymarket Square and the Kenwood haunts of the 1924 thrill killers Leopold and Loeb. On Sunday he and a group of historians-turned-artists will re-enact the 1877 scene of a Pilsen railroad strike and a clash between laborers and the Chicago police.
Related
A staging of the Battle of the Halsted Viaduct will take place at 3 p.m. on the corner of South Halsted and West 16th Streets. Attendees will be invited to participate as mobsters and policemen, said Mr. Durica, the founder of the irreverent Pocket Guide to Hell Tours and a graduate student at the University of Chicago.
Period dress is encouraged, and a horse-drawn carriage, live music and foam bricks - in case the audience gets rowdy - will be provided, Mr. Durica said. The free event concludes the Version Festival, a springtime convergence of local artists and musicians that is in its 10th year.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Representing Chicago: Media Burn Archive
New Chicago Studies article!
Media burn represents Chicago with innovative online archive on Thursday, May 6 at Film Studies Center
It was 1970, and Sony’s Portopak had just become the video camera of choice for a growing number of Chicago’s underground filmmakers. When Judy Hoffman wanted to interview garbage collectors, waitresses and aldermen to capture the images and sounds of a “different city” than what was shown on television, that camera made it possible.
“It was called Guerilla Television,” Hoffman, now a professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago, explained. “You couldn’t get anything seen on TV that wasn’t produced in a studio, but we started playing around with this new technology … to change how film was produced and received.”
Much of this independent work would be in danger of vanishing, Hoffman says, if not for Media Burn - a project to share the city’s most valuable independent films for free online. Hoffman sees Media Burn’s archive, which boasts hours of footage with city luminaries and everyday citizens - among them the legendary author and radio broadcaster Studs Terkel - to be a resource to students and researchers studying Chicago’s intricate cultural and political history.
Results of Media Burn’s six-year online archiving project will be shared with the University on May 6 at 7:00 p.m. in the Film Studies Center in a presentation called Representing Chicago: Experimental Video and Television at the Media Burn Archive. In addition to screening videos from the collection, the presentation will walk viewers through the Media Burn digital archive and discuss the particular role media plays in making Chicago’s people, politics, and culture accessible.
“The type of work you find in this archive doesn’t exist anywhere else—it’s totally unique. This is because it was done on a medium that was very looked down upon,” says Hoffman, who is using the archive to teach a spring course on Chicago’s film history.
Sara Chapman (AB 04), Executive Director of Media Burn Digital Archive, echoes this sentiment: “The type of work that came out of this movement is not easy to categorize. It does not at all resemble the feature-length documentary movies that are distributed in movie theaters, featuring voiceovers and archival photos or anything like that. The work is often very personal, and it is usually made by a small group of people, maybe a single individual or maybe a handful of people.”
But the material is extensive: Famed Alderman Vito Marzullo; former owner of the White Sox Bill Veeck; eight of the working-class men and women interviewed for Studs Terkel’s book Working.
And then there is Studs Terkel himself, who donated his own collection to Media Burn. Hoffman and her collaborator Tom Weinberg, Media Burn’s president and founder, shot him after their final Working portrait was finished. Hoffman describes the experience of working with Terkel as “tremendous,” as he flowed easily between the roles of mentor and subject.
“He respected people, and was thoroughly passionate about social justice.” Pair that independent spirit with a revolutionary new form of videography, she says, and: “There were no rules. We were about making [our own] rules, and making change.”
That particular film made it onto PBS. But Hoffman insists that what remains of the footage she and other independent filmmakers shot throughout the 1970s would not be available without Media Burn’s extensive efforts to digitize and share the work.
According to Chapman, the archive houses over 6,000 videotapes in total, and spans 40 years of video work from all over the world, including footage of the U.S. invasion of Panama and illegal art collectives in Moscow, Russia.
“Over one-third of the collection has a direct connection to Chicago, whether documenting the early video movement here, the arts, politics, or daily life,” she adds. “Nowhere else can students find these kinds of portraits of our city and its people, politics, and neighborhoods.”
Representing Chicago: Experimental Video and Television at the Media Burn Archive will be at the Film Studies Center (Cobb 307) on Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 7 pm. For reservations, call (773) 702-8596.
Media burn represents Chicago with innovative online archive on Thursday, May 6 at Film Studies Center
It was 1970, and Sony’s Portopak had just become the video camera of choice for a growing number of Chicago’s underground filmmakers. When Judy Hoffman wanted to interview garbage collectors, waitresses and aldermen to capture the images and sounds of a “different city” than what was shown on television, that camera made it possible.
“It was called Guerilla Television,” Hoffman, now a professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago, explained. “You couldn’t get anything seen on TV that wasn’t produced in a studio, but we started playing around with this new technology … to change how film was produced and received.”
Much of this independent work would be in danger of vanishing, Hoffman says, if not for Media Burn - a project to share the city’s most valuable independent films for free online. Hoffman sees Media Burn’s archive, which boasts hours of footage with city luminaries and everyday citizens - among them the legendary author and radio broadcaster Studs Terkel - to be a resource to students and researchers studying Chicago’s intricate cultural and political history.
Results of Media Burn’s six-year online archiving project will be shared with the University on May 6 at 7:00 p.m. in the Film Studies Center in a presentation called Representing Chicago: Experimental Video and Television at the Media Burn Archive. In addition to screening videos from the collection, the presentation will walk viewers through the Media Burn digital archive and discuss the particular role media plays in making Chicago’s people, politics, and culture accessible.
“The type of work you find in this archive doesn’t exist anywhere else—it’s totally unique. This is because it was done on a medium that was very looked down upon,” says Hoffman, who is using the archive to teach a spring course on Chicago’s film history.
Sara Chapman (AB 04), Executive Director of Media Burn Digital Archive, echoes this sentiment: “The type of work that came out of this movement is not easy to categorize. It does not at all resemble the feature-length documentary movies that are distributed in movie theaters, featuring voiceovers and archival photos or anything like that. The work is often very personal, and it is usually made by a small group of people, maybe a single individual or maybe a handful of people.”
But the material is extensive: Famed Alderman Vito Marzullo; former owner of the White Sox Bill Veeck; eight of the working-class men and women interviewed for Studs Terkel’s book Working.
And then there is Studs Terkel himself, who donated his own collection to Media Burn. Hoffman and her collaborator Tom Weinberg, Media Burn’s president and founder, shot him after their final Working portrait was finished. Hoffman describes the experience of working with Terkel as “tremendous,” as he flowed easily between the roles of mentor and subject.
“He respected people, and was thoroughly passionate about social justice.” Pair that independent spirit with a revolutionary new form of videography, she says, and: “There were no rules. We were about making [our own] rules, and making change.”
That particular film made it onto PBS. But Hoffman insists that what remains of the footage she and other independent filmmakers shot throughout the 1970s would not be available without Media Burn’s extensive efforts to digitize and share the work.
According to Chapman, the archive houses over 6,000 videotapes in total, and spans 40 years of video work from all over the world, including footage of the U.S. invasion of Panama and illegal art collectives in Moscow, Russia.
“Over one-third of the collection has a direct connection to Chicago, whether documenting the early video movement here, the arts, politics, or daily life,” she adds. “Nowhere else can students find these kinds of portraits of our city and its people, politics, and neighborhoods.”
Representing Chicago: Experimental Video and Television at the Media Burn Archive will be at the Film Studies Center (Cobb 307) on Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 7 pm. For reservations, call (773) 702-8596.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
You Are Here
One image stands out among fourth-year Cela Sutton’s Orientation Week memories: a black-and-white photo of the Checkerboard Lounge, a famous South Side spot for jazz musicians in the mid-1970s.
Sutton has been thinking about that jazz club a lot lately.
The photomontage was part of You Are Here, a documentary about the University of Chicago’s historic relationship with its neighboring communities that has been shown to incoming students since 2006. Now, Sutton has been tasked with researching and producing a sequel to the film with the goal of introducing students to the issues that shape their new community.
Sutton is partnering with Ben Kolak, AB’06, the creator of You Are Here, to produce the updated documentary, to be called You Are Here Too. The pair will follow the structure Kolak created in his original film by selecting case studies to exemplify larger social and political issues, from urban education to health care.
Just as photos of the historic jazz club illustrated a story about the complex struggles facing community development leaders, Sutton plans to produce a broad picture of life on the South Side that addresses current matters, from the developments at Harper Court to the birth of the Logan Arts Center.
“The original version of You Are Here has a superb historic perspective and ends with one current example of University of Chicago involvement in the community: one charter school,” according to Wallace Goode, Director of the University Community Service Center, who is Sutton’s project manager.
“Since then, we’ve added three more charter schools, we have doubled our number of Community Service RSOs, we have established the Woodlawn Collaborative and developed Chicago Studies—these are just a few examples of how the University has in the last four years expanded its civic engagement within the city of Chicago.”
To cover this range of topics, Sutton said she is dividing the film into four areas: education, health, community development and the arts.
“We’re trying to make each [story] transition into the other. You Are Here ended with a snapshot of one of the Charter schools, so we’re opening up with the charter schools and the Urban Education Institute,” she said.
The film will touch on local arts organizations such as the Hyde Park Art Center and the Little Black Pearl, as well as the University’s decision to build the new South Campus Residence Hall in Woodlawn, the neighborhood directly south of campus.
This means interviewing everyone from Vice President for Student Life Kim Goff-Crews to Wardell Lavendar, the self-described “Mayor of Woodlawn.”
Sutton is rising to that challenge.
“My main goal is to show a balanced piece, and a key piece that wasn’t in the first documentary was the student leaders who are involved in these issues,” Sutton said. She says Project Health and Art Should, both RSOs that work with community members, will play important roles in the film.
“Most students who come here aren’t from Chicago, or even from Illinois, and especially not from the South Side, which is totally different from any other part of Chicago,” Sutton explained. “We want students to take advantage of living in such a diverse and interesting place.”
Sutton has been thinking about that jazz club a lot lately.
The photomontage was part of You Are Here, a documentary about the University of Chicago’s historic relationship with its neighboring communities that has been shown to incoming students since 2006. Now, Sutton has been tasked with researching and producing a sequel to the film with the goal of introducing students to the issues that shape their new community.
Sutton is partnering with Ben Kolak, AB’06, the creator of You Are Here, to produce the updated documentary, to be called You Are Here Too. The pair will follow the structure Kolak created in his original film by selecting case studies to exemplify larger social and political issues, from urban education to health care.
Just as photos of the historic jazz club illustrated a story about the complex struggles facing community development leaders, Sutton plans to produce a broad picture of life on the South Side that addresses current matters, from the developments at Harper Court to the birth of the Logan Arts Center.
“The original version of You Are Here has a superb historic perspective and ends with one current example of University of Chicago involvement in the community: one charter school,” according to Wallace Goode, Director of the University Community Service Center, who is Sutton’s project manager.
“Since then, we’ve added three more charter schools, we have doubled our number of Community Service RSOs, we have established the Woodlawn Collaborative and developed Chicago Studies—these are just a few examples of how the University has in the last four years expanded its civic engagement within the city of Chicago.”
To cover this range of topics, Sutton said she is dividing the film into four areas: education, health, community development and the arts.
“We’re trying to make each [story] transition into the other. You Are Here ended with a snapshot of one of the Charter schools, so we’re opening up with the charter schools and the Urban Education Institute,” she said.
The film will touch on local arts organizations such as the Hyde Park Art Center and the Little Black Pearl, as well as the University’s decision to build the new South Campus Residence Hall in Woodlawn, the neighborhood directly south of campus.
This means interviewing everyone from Vice President for Student Life Kim Goff-Crews to Wardell Lavendar, the self-described “Mayor of Woodlawn.”
Sutton is rising to that challenge.
“My main goal is to show a balanced piece, and a key piece that wasn’t in the first documentary was the student leaders who are involved in these issues,” Sutton said. She says Project Health and Art Should, both RSOs that work with community members, will play important roles in the film.
“Most students who come here aren’t from Chicago, or even from Illinois, and especially not from the South Side, which is totally different from any other part of Chicago,” Sutton explained. “We want students to take advantage of living in such a diverse and interesting place.”
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Pulse: Making Farmers’ Markets More Accessible
By RACHEL CROMIDAS
Published: April 10, 2010 in the New York Times.
A Woodlawn farmers' market has been accepting Illinois food stamps for double their value, and now it is helping three more markets to do the same.
Related
Only 3 of Chicago's 39 farmers' markets had the system needed to process the stamps, which in Illinois are redeemed using debit cards called LINK cards, because most of the markets accept only cash. The Woodlawn market at 61st Street and Dorchester Avenue was the only one to double the cardholders' buying power, said David Rand, a farm forager for the city and the Green City Market.
Dennis Ryan, the Woodlawn market's manager, is taking his LINK system to the Englewood, Lawndale and Bronzeville farmers' markets for their May openings. The program at all four markets is being paid for by a grant from the Wholesome Wave Foundation.
For these South Side neighborhoods, "there are very few if any options to purchase fresh produce," Mr. Ryan said. "We have to make sure it's financially accessible to everyone."
Published: April 10, 2010 in the New York Times.
A Woodlawn farmers' market has been accepting Illinois food stamps for double their value, and now it is helping three more markets to do the same.
Related
Only 3 of Chicago's 39 farmers' markets had the system needed to process the stamps, which in Illinois are redeemed using debit cards called LINK cards, because most of the markets accept only cash. The Woodlawn market at 61st Street and Dorchester Avenue was the only one to double the cardholders' buying power, said David Rand, a farm forager for the city and the Green City Market.
Dennis Ryan, the Woodlawn market's manager, is taking his LINK system to the Englewood, Lawndale and Bronzeville farmers' markets for their May openings. The program at all four markets is being paid for by a grant from the Wholesome Wave Foundation.
For these South Side neighborhoods, "there are very few if any options to purchase fresh produce," Mr. Ryan said. "We have to make sure it's financially accessible to everyone."
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Learning From the Pros
My latest article from the College Page
Evan Garrett can’t help but feel a little starstruck.
His dormitory, Max Palevsky Commons, is just steps away from Court Theatre, one of Chicago’s most critically acclaimed theater companies. And as a Theater and Performance Studies Major, Garrett has been given an inside view of the theater world from Court’s directors and dramaturges.
Garrett’s theater studies are about to get even better.
He and five other undergraduates have been selected to perform a never-before-seen short play by the award-winning playwright Tony Kushner in a staged reading on April 8. Kushner will be on campus to discuss the play, But the Giraffe, and his other works, as part of the ArtSpeaks fellowship program and speaker series on April 6.
In the meantime, Garrett is taking a class on Kushner and rehearsing around the clock under the guidance of University Theater staff and Court Theatre directors, including Court’s celebrated artistic director Charles Newell.
According to Heidi Coleman, Director of TAPS, UT owes Kushner’s upcoming visit to its strong partnership with Court Theatre.
“These kinds of collaborations really come out of the ideas that bounce back and forth between UT, TAPS and Court,” Coleman explained. Newell and UT’s staff “really make it a priority to come up with projects that we might both be interested in.”
Coleman says that the partnership between Court Theatre and UT is a natural, given the theaters’ locations and resources. Still, it is rare for universities to regularly collaborate with professional theaters to this degree.
“It’s all about the relationships for us. Charlie [Newell] is invested in students in very real relationships, not just lip service,” Coleman says.
Garrett agrees. “To have an hour and 20 minutes where the artistic director of Court is directing you is amazing. There are not that many places in the world where you get a critically acclaimed director and such an acclaimed playwright working with undergraduates,” he says. “That’s exactly what is happening with But the Giraffe.”
Garrett especially appreciates the connection he’s been able to establish with Newell and Court Theater via a class he took in winter 2010: The Theatrical Illusion: Corneille, Kushner and the Baroque, co-taught by Newell and Prof. Larry Norman. The course coincides with a run of Kushner’s adaptation of Corneille’s L'Illusion Comique at Court.
Newell says the class he is co-teaching is a rare opportunity for students in the College to work closely on a theater production with professional artists. “Not only are we talking about the coming theater production, but the students have been visiting the rehearsal hall and working with the actors in the company,” he says. “Hopefully this will inform and challenge and inspire students in their own work at UT.”
According to Newell, Court Theatre had a long history as Hyde Park’s only community theater until it became a part of the University and later a professional company in the mid-1970s.
“Jump to 2010, and [with] the collaborations we have been able to form with TAPS and the extraordinary activity going on at UT,” Newell says, and Court has found a variety of opportunities to bring students through its doors to watch rehearsals, and speak to actors and directors. “But the Giraffe is just one of those win-win cross-pollination opportunities that Court and UT have been finding.”
Garrett, for one, regularly takes advantage of Court Theater’s discounted student tickets, and tries to tie what he’s learned from their productions to his own work whenever possible. Court’s Radio Macbeth, for example, serendipitously aligned with a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth on campus last year.
Garrett was taking a class at the time taught by Kate Peterson, a dramaturge at Court. Peterson introduced him to Anne Bogart, director of the reimagined Macbeth production. He has also attended Court Theater rehearsals, most recently with his class on Kushner’s works.
“It really speaks well to the University that we are able to do this,” he adds. “We hear about the Nobel-prize winning physicists all the time but not so much about the arts; UChicago is really working hard for the arts.”
Evan Garrett can’t help but feel a little starstruck.
His dormitory, Max Palevsky Commons, is just steps away from Court Theatre, one of Chicago’s most critically acclaimed theater companies. And as a Theater and Performance Studies Major, Garrett has been given an inside view of the theater world from Court’s directors and dramaturges.
Garrett’s theater studies are about to get even better.
He and five other undergraduates have been selected to perform a never-before-seen short play by the award-winning playwright Tony Kushner in a staged reading on April 8. Kushner will be on campus to discuss the play, But the Giraffe, and his other works, as part of the ArtSpeaks fellowship program and speaker series on April 6.
In the meantime, Garrett is taking a class on Kushner and rehearsing around the clock under the guidance of University Theater staff and Court Theatre directors, including Court’s celebrated artistic director Charles Newell.
According to Heidi Coleman, Director of TAPS, UT owes Kushner’s upcoming visit to its strong partnership with Court Theatre.
“These kinds of collaborations really come out of the ideas that bounce back and forth between UT, TAPS and Court,” Coleman explained. Newell and UT’s staff “really make it a priority to come up with projects that we might both be interested in.”
Coleman says that the partnership between Court Theatre and UT is a natural, given the theaters’ locations and resources. Still, it is rare for universities to regularly collaborate with professional theaters to this degree.
“It’s all about the relationships for us. Charlie [Newell] is invested in students in very real relationships, not just lip service,” Coleman says.
Garrett agrees. “To have an hour and 20 minutes where the artistic director of Court is directing you is amazing. There are not that many places in the world where you get a critically acclaimed director and such an acclaimed playwright working with undergraduates,” he says. “That’s exactly what is happening with But the Giraffe.”
Garrett especially appreciates the connection he’s been able to establish with Newell and Court Theater via a class he took in winter 2010: The Theatrical Illusion: Corneille, Kushner and the Baroque, co-taught by Newell and Prof. Larry Norman. The course coincides with a run of Kushner’s adaptation of Corneille’s L'Illusion Comique at Court.
Newell says the class he is co-teaching is a rare opportunity for students in the College to work closely on a theater production with professional artists. “Not only are we talking about the coming theater production, but the students have been visiting the rehearsal hall and working with the actors in the company,” he says. “Hopefully this will inform and challenge and inspire students in their own work at UT.”
According to Newell, Court Theatre had a long history as Hyde Park’s only community theater until it became a part of the University and later a professional company in the mid-1970s.
“Jump to 2010, and [with] the collaborations we have been able to form with TAPS and the extraordinary activity going on at UT,” Newell says, and Court has found a variety of opportunities to bring students through its doors to watch rehearsals, and speak to actors and directors. “But the Giraffe is just one of those win-win cross-pollination opportunities that Court and UT have been finding.”
Garrett, for one, regularly takes advantage of Court Theater’s discounted student tickets, and tries to tie what he’s learned from their productions to his own work whenever possible. Court’s Radio Macbeth, for example, serendipitously aligned with a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth on campus last year.
Garrett was taking a class at the time taught by Kate Peterson, a dramaturge at Court. Peterson introduced him to Anne Bogart, director of the reimagined Macbeth production. He has also attended Court Theater rehearsals, most recently with his class on Kushner’s works.
“It really speaks well to the University that we are able to do this,” he adds. “We hear about the Nobel-prize winning physicists all the time but not so much about the arts; UChicago is really working hard for the arts.”
Friday, February 12, 2010
Student bassist discovers a new world of music
The broad musical perspective that third-year Kirsten Paige gained from her orchestra’s winter tour of China began with her fellow musicians in the bass section.
Seated around Paige in the double bass section of the World Orchestra were students from Belgium, Colombia, Brazil, Spain, Slovenia, and Italy. Together they puzzled over musical scores, managed their way through an eight-city tour, and even found time for a New Year’s Eve jazz jam with other musicians in a hotel lobby.
Their success in melding diverse voices should serve Paige well as she pursues her BA in Music History and Theory. After three fast-paced weeks of touring, including stops at the Great Wall and a performance for the Chinese prime minister, Paige found lessons to apply in the classroom as well as the recital hall.
“The group taught me that there is really an infinite number of ways of approaching musical problems, both performance-oriented and theoretical,” Paige says.
At UChicago, Paige is combining her interest in music theory and history—especially opera—with a passion for music performance that started at age 10, when she began playing bass. She auditioned in January 2009 for the World Orchestra, a group of 75 musicians aged 18 to 28. Less than a year later, the students met and rehearsed for a week before embarking on their tour along China’s coast, including stops in Shanghai and Beijing.
Lessons From All Over the Globe
As one of five American students in the group, Paige learned the universality of music, whether during rehearsal, concerts, or the group’s impromptu jam sessions.
Become of a fan of UChicago Arts on FacebookBecome a fan of UChicago Arts on Facebook
“It is unlike any other orchestra that you could find anywhere,” Paige says. “Professional musicians have been playing for decades and already have their individual styles. But everybody in the World Orchestra is a student, and still developing in this way.”
While touring through the winter holidays, the orchestra’s revelry always led to music.
“A couple of students were really good at jazz, so for our New Year’s party they smuggled instruments into the hotel restaurant—we basically took over. While they were playing, everyone started dancing,” she says of the students who danced in the styles from their native Latin American countries.
Between visits to national museums and the Great Wall, the group learned it would be playing for China’s prime minister while in Guangzhou. That evening, they performed for him and an audience of more than 2,000.
For the musicians and many audience members, the orchestra bore an uplifting message about the ability of diverse cultures to connect and build something new together, Paige says. When conductor Josep Vicent needed his worldly crew to change their tone, he described the image of a candle flickering to represent the warmth he wanted their music to convey.
“Once, somebody had a question about phrasing, and everybody had a different idea about how to answer it,” she says. “The product that resulted from all these different approaches was really colorful and varied, in terms of textures and emotions.”
Musical Love Turns to Opera
Paige started playing bass in grade school after her parents encouraged her to pick up an instrument. She studied at the Juilliard School of Music and became enthralled with opera when her bass professor, Tim Cobb of the Metropolitan Opera, suggested she attend a performance at the Met.
“Opera immediately excited my interest. It just grabs me,” Paige says. “I’ve only played a couple of operas. I get distracted when I play opera—I want to pay attention to what’s going on on the stage.”
Opera immediately excited my interest. It just grabs me.”
—third-year Kirsten Paige
The strength of UChicago’s program in music history and theory drew Paige to the University, she says.
“We basically have an all-star faculty in the Music Department. Whenever I tell anyone I go to UChicago, everybody knows our department.” She says the department has a small number of undergraduate majors, making it easier for students to seek out professors, including her BA advisor—Philip Gossett, the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor in Music, and one of the foremost experts on Italian opera.
Paige is currently working on a BA paper about several of Giuseppe Verdi’s later works. On the performance side, she recently played in the University Symphony Orchestra’s production of Peter Tchaikovsky’s works on Jan. 30.
She still plans to pursue a graduate degree in musicology, though Paige says the China experience left her somewhat torn between her interest in opera and the excitement of playing for new audiences.
“Playing in the World Orchestra is incredibly inspiring,” Paige says. “Regardless of what I decide to pursue as a career, music is going to be the focus of my life.”
By Rachel Cromidas, third-year in the College
Seated around Paige in the double bass section of the World Orchestra were students from Belgium, Colombia, Brazil, Spain, Slovenia, and Italy. Together they puzzled over musical scores, managed their way through an eight-city tour, and even found time for a New Year’s Eve jazz jam with other musicians in a hotel lobby.
Their success in melding diverse voices should serve Paige well as she pursues her BA in Music History and Theory. After three fast-paced weeks of touring, including stops at the Great Wall and a performance for the Chinese prime minister, Paige found lessons to apply in the classroom as well as the recital hall.
“The group taught me that there is really an infinite number of ways of approaching musical problems, both performance-oriented and theoretical,” Paige says.
At UChicago, Paige is combining her interest in music theory and history—especially opera—with a passion for music performance that started at age 10, when she began playing bass. She auditioned in January 2009 for the World Orchestra, a group of 75 musicians aged 18 to 28. Less than a year later, the students met and rehearsed for a week before embarking on their tour along China’s coast, including stops in Shanghai and Beijing.
Lessons From All Over the Globe
As one of five American students in the group, Paige learned the universality of music, whether during rehearsal, concerts, or the group’s impromptu jam sessions.
Become of a fan of UChicago Arts on FacebookBecome a fan of UChicago Arts on Facebook
“It is unlike any other orchestra that you could find anywhere,” Paige says. “Professional musicians have been playing for decades and already have their individual styles. But everybody in the World Orchestra is a student, and still developing in this way.”
While touring through the winter holidays, the orchestra’s revelry always led to music.
“A couple of students were really good at jazz, so for our New Year’s party they smuggled instruments into the hotel restaurant—we basically took over. While they were playing, everyone started dancing,” she says of the students who danced in the styles from their native Latin American countries.
Between visits to national museums and the Great Wall, the group learned it would be playing for China’s prime minister while in Guangzhou. That evening, they performed for him and an audience of more than 2,000.
For the musicians and many audience members, the orchestra bore an uplifting message about the ability of diverse cultures to connect and build something new together, Paige says. When conductor Josep Vicent needed his worldly crew to change their tone, he described the image of a candle flickering to represent the warmth he wanted their music to convey.
“Once, somebody had a question about phrasing, and everybody had a different idea about how to answer it,” she says. “The product that resulted from all these different approaches was really colorful and varied, in terms of textures and emotions.”
Musical Love Turns to Opera
Paige started playing bass in grade school after her parents encouraged her to pick up an instrument. She studied at the Juilliard School of Music and became enthralled with opera when her bass professor, Tim Cobb of the Metropolitan Opera, suggested she attend a performance at the Met.
“Opera immediately excited my interest. It just grabs me,” Paige says. “I’ve only played a couple of operas. I get distracted when I play opera—I want to pay attention to what’s going on on the stage.”
Opera immediately excited my interest. It just grabs me.”
—third-year Kirsten Paige
The strength of UChicago’s program in music history and theory drew Paige to the University, she says.
“We basically have an all-star faculty in the Music Department. Whenever I tell anyone I go to UChicago, everybody knows our department.” She says the department has a small number of undergraduate majors, making it easier for students to seek out professors, including her BA advisor—Philip Gossett, the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor in Music, and one of the foremost experts on Italian opera.
Paige is currently working on a BA paper about several of Giuseppe Verdi’s later works. On the performance side, she recently played in the University Symphony Orchestra’s production of Peter Tchaikovsky’s works on Jan. 30.
She still plans to pursue a graduate degree in musicology, though Paige says the China experience left her somewhat torn between her interest in opera and the excitement of playing for new audiences.
“Playing in the World Orchestra is incredibly inspiring,” Paige says. “Regardless of what I decide to pursue as a career, music is going to be the focus of my life.”
By Rachel Cromidas, third-year in the College
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
What I learned in 2009
2009 has been a truly transforming year for me. I realized this when the boyfriend and I stepped off the University's free shuttles to downtown (meant to take students to Taking the Next Step, an alumni networking and career preparation event) and took several steps away from the event to spend the day together running errands instead. A year ago I was in those Marriott conferences rooms, begging alumni for some shred of hope that the financial crisis hadn't dealt any fatal blows to my future in journalism, and Washington Post columnist Bob Levy first told me about the Alicia Paterson Foundation, and the general notion that one could fund investigative projects via independent grants.
Like the Summer Action Grant, which I went on to apply for and receive later that year, and used to run, jump, throw myself into (and many other sports metaphors apply here) covering Chicago's Olympic Bid. Now I'm 20, and have my first byline in the New York Times. Damn things change; this much I am thrilled with. But how can I not be overwhelmed by the notion that I really am as capable as people say I am, that maybe I don't have any excuses not to be doing exactly what I want to do with my life, starting now. So I'm 12 days late in the New Years reflection department, but how's that for making up for lost time?
Without further ado, I give you What I Learned in 2009. Some of it's frivolously cosmetic, some of it has completely changed the way I view my place in this world:
1) Life always looks better after you’ve been on a jog and written a blog post, article or journal entry.
2) When I was in third grade I decided that I looked chubby with shoulder length hair, and demanded my parents allow me to grow it out. This summer, I hacked half of it off. The verdict? Short hair does not make you look fat. And I'm cutting it even shorter—will report back with more not-fat results next year.
3) When in doubt, go out. There is more to be accomplished outdoors, with friends, up late, on the North Side, than there ever could be at home in bed with an orange and the books (no, not all the books at once). Though the latter is a comforting prospect...
4) The only way to get real work done is to do so in isolation. But the time you spend not getting working done with friends is much more valuable.
5) Writing the way I do is never a bad idea, though some people will try to tell you it is.
6) The only time people are willing to tell you about themselves is at 11 pm after pancakes. Be prepared.
7) Physics majors are like football players for the least disenchanted of UChicago nerds. So don't hesitate to ask them to move your furniture/suitcases, etc.
8) Sometimes you may feel overwhelmed; your life may seem to hectic; your internal monologue may start to sound like one of those TV sleeping pill ads. You will fall asleep, give it time.
9) Not every ache and pain is the downfall of civilization in your brain. You have no Achilles toenail, tooth, etc.
10) You can count on Ben for much more than you’d ever believed.
Like the Summer Action Grant, which I went on to apply for and receive later that year, and used to run, jump, throw myself into (and many other sports metaphors apply here) covering Chicago's Olympic Bid. Now I'm 20, and have my first byline in the New York Times. Damn things change; this much I am thrilled with. But how can I not be overwhelmed by the notion that I really am as capable as people say I am, that maybe I don't have any excuses not to be doing exactly what I want to do with my life, starting now. So I'm 12 days late in the New Years reflection department, but how's that for making up for lost time?
Without further ado, I give you What I Learned in 2009. Some of it's frivolously cosmetic, some of it has completely changed the way I view my place in this world:
1) Life always looks better after you’ve been on a jog and written a blog post, article or journal entry.
2) When I was in third grade I decided that I looked chubby with shoulder length hair, and demanded my parents allow me to grow it out. This summer, I hacked half of it off. The verdict? Short hair does not make you look fat. And I'm cutting it even shorter—will report back with more not-fat results next year.
3) When in doubt, go out. There is more to be accomplished outdoors, with friends, up late, on the North Side, than there ever could be at home in bed with an orange and the books (no, not all the books at once). Though the latter is a comforting prospect...
4) The only way to get real work done is to do so in isolation. But the time you spend not getting working done with friends is much more valuable.
5) Writing the way I do is never a bad idea, though some people will try to tell you it is.
6) The only time people are willing to tell you about themselves is at 11 pm after pancakes. Be prepared.
7) Physics majors are like football players for the least disenchanted of UChicago nerds. So don't hesitate to ask them to move your furniture/suitcases, etc.
8) Sometimes you may feel overwhelmed; your life may seem to hectic; your internal monologue may start to sound like one of those TV sleeping pill ads. You will fall asleep, give it time.
9) Not every ache and pain is the downfall of civilization in your brain. You have no Achilles toenail, tooth, etc.
10) You can count on Ben for much more than you’d ever believed.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Failed Olympics Bid Leaves Neighborhood in Flux
The secret's out! Through that special combination of luck/busting my ass, I wrote a story for the Chicago edition of the New York Times—specifically, for the Chicago News Cooperative.
Chicago News Cooperative
By RACHEL CROMIDAS
For much of Shannon Fischer’s 20 years, community change in her Bronzeville neighborhood has come in the form of a wrecking ball.
First, the Ida B. Wells housing projects fell, then the Robert Taylor homes, and now, within view of her apartment at 33rd Street and Cottage Grove, Michael Reese Hospital is coming down. Destruction can often lead to reconstruction, but hopes that Bronzeville might be revitalized as the site of an Olympic Village died in October when Chicago lost its bid for the 2016 Summer Games.
The neighborhood’s residential market took a severe hit, and developers have put off major investments. Few developers, it seems, can get serious about new projects in Bronzeville until the City of Chicago reveals plans for the landmark Michael Reese site, 37 acres at the heart of a potentially promising lakefront neighborhood.
Ms. Fischer remains optimistic. Even though the blocks in her neighborhood alternate between new condominiums and empty lots, foot traffic is sparse — and the only shopping center consists mostly of convenience stores and an auto repair shop — she believes greater Bronzeville will have its day.
“I think the neighborhood will continue to grow, considering there’s different people, different races and age groups moving in,” Ms. Fischer said.
Bronzeville was once a thriving “black metropolis” with hundreds of black-owned businesses and a booming night life. Its population swelled during the great migration of Southern blacks seeking jobs after World War I.
The poet Gwendolyn Brooks lived there, and in 1945, her first book of poetry — “A Street in Bronzeville” — brought her instant critical acclaim. Other notable residents included Richard Wright, the author of “Native Son,” and the jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong.
The area’s decline began in the 1950s as it gradually lost its middle class and businesses started to close. Though Bronzeville is unlikely to reclaim its golden era, developers like Keith Giles see the potential for new growth, only he does not expect to reach it any time soon.
Last year, Mr. Giles’s firm, Kargil Development, told the city that it was interested in developing the Olympic Village. The project would have helped Olympics promoters realize their vision of a new neighborhood that could bridge the gap between the resurgent Bronzeville community and the South Loop.
“It was an exciting development opportunity for an international event,” Mr. Giles said.
But with the Olympics impetus gone, banks not lending and no other financing in sight, Mr. Giles does not expect action soon on a Michael Reese site that might cost $1 billion to redevelop.
“The development business right now is on sabbatical,” he said.
While Mr. Giles’s company considers another project nearby, it doesn’t expect to see change soon.. “Unfortunately, most everything has stopped,” Mr. Giles said. “There’s new developments on one block, and you go across the street and there’s a burned-out building.”
Alderman Toni Preckwinkle, whose Fourth Ward includes the Reese campus, expects the city to release its plan for the site early this year. She said that a developer might be selected by the end of the year, but that the first buildings would most likely not be completed until 2012.
Ms. Preckwinkle also said developers would “prefer a clear site” around Michael Reese, casting further doubt on the efforts of preservationists who are fighting to save nearby buildings designed in consultation with the architect Walter Gropius, founder of the influential Bauhaus School.
Bernita Johnson-Gabriel, executive director of the Quad Communities Development Corporation, a neighborhood group that serves the Kenwood, Oakland and Douglas neighborhoods that make up greater Bronzeville, said hurdles to development included concerns about crime that are rooted in racial stereotypes.
“We are a neighborhood of color,” Ms. Johnson-Gabriel said. “There’s a perception of crime that obviously doesn’t quite exist here the way it is portrayed.”
Indeed, crime in the Douglas and neighboring Oakland neighborhoods fell steadily over the past decade, according to Chicago Police Department reports. Statistics show a 67 percent decline for Douglas — to 1,074 crimes in 2009 from 3,290 in 1999 — while Oakland’s number fell by more than half, to fewer than 300 from 611.
Some of the city’s larger development groups are pushing ahead despite a lack of clarity about the city’s plans. One, Draper and Kramer, is proceeding on a 70-acre development just south of Michael Reese that it began planning three years ago. In addition to 2,000 high-rise apartment units, the Lake Meadows project will feature renovation of existing rental units and condominiums, construction of single-family town homes and expansion of a small shopping center on the corner of 35th Street and Cottage Grove.
The firm will keep a close eye on the city’s plan for the Michael Reese site.
“We are very interested because it’s a large development and right next door to our property,” said Donald Vitek, vice president of acquisitions and development for Draper and Kramer.
While some residents and developers want officials to move quickly on the city’s plans for the Reese site, Mr. Vitek said a slower pace made sense. It will allow time to survey current community needs, he said, and possibly wait out a soured housing market.
The Douglas neighborhood’s new condos and town homes are selling for as little as $125 a square foot, a steep discount from similar South Loop properties. But Mr. Vitek predicted a steady increase in demand once the market improves.
An Olympics aftershock is hitting the market for existing homes in the neighborhood, too. Pam Dempsey, a real estate broker for Bronzeville Properties, said home sales came to a standstill during the Olympics bidding process, as property owners waited for the decision on a site. Only after the bid failed did they look to sell.
“They’re now entering into a down market,” Ms. Dempsey said. Prices for single-family homes in the area have declined to $100,000 to $200,000 now from $200,000 to $400,000 in mid-2007, she said. A high foreclosure rate has made the Bronzeville downturn worse than what has hit the South Loop or Hyde Park.
“We’ve experienced a lot of really, really deeply discounted foreclosures,” Ms. Dempsey said. “You’ll have a house that needs a ton of work going for maybe $35,000.”
When development does come, she said, Bronzeville will benefit most if the retail part appeals to the same kind of newly affluent residents as those who have moved into the South Loop and Hyde Park.
“Not the fast-food stuff we already have around here,” Ms. Dempsey said, “but nicer retail, like the stuff that came to the South Loop over the past 5 to 10 years. A wine shop or a cafe or bookstores — these things will keep people in the neighborhood.”
Joseph Schwietermann, director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University, warned against easy comparisons between Bronzeville and the Hyde Park and South Loop neighborhoods. He attributes a combination of poor post-World War II urban planning and Bronzeville’s history of slow growth as factors that have made Bronzeville less successful.
“It’s easier to invest in housing with the hopes that retail will follow,” Mr. Schwietermann said. But, he added, “you can’t assume that if you build it, they will come.”
In October, contractors hired by the city began tearing down the first of seven buildings on the Michael Reese campus slated for demolition. The timeline for development is not urgent, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Community Development said, because the city will not begin making mortgage payments on the property until 2014.
The department envisions a large-scale residential and retail complex with a mixture of affordable and market-rate housing, in addition to dry cleaners, coffee shops and other staple businesses of neighborhood life. Its stated goal is “to build a community from scratch,” and stimulate redevelopment on the lakefront south of McCormick Place.
Byron Lindsey, manager of an auto repair shop, has seen little retail growth around the garage he has managed for nearly 20 years in what is now the Lake Meadows shopping center.
But his business is down only slightly despite the slow economy, Mr. Lindsey said as he juggled a phone in each hand and spoke to customers from behind the counter. He has perceived an influx of higher-income residents over the past five years, which he expects will contribute to a comeback once the economy recovers.
Redevelopment of the Michael Reese property could be the key.
“It could really determine whether the community gets a kick-start on its way back,” Mr. Lindsey said.
Rachel Cromidas is a Chicago freelance writer. Ben Goldberger contributed reporting.
Chicago News Cooperative
By RACHEL CROMIDAS
For much of Shannon Fischer’s 20 years, community change in her Bronzeville neighborhood has come in the form of a wrecking ball.
First, the Ida B. Wells housing projects fell, then the Robert Taylor homes, and now, within view of her apartment at 33rd Street and Cottage Grove, Michael Reese Hospital is coming down. Destruction can often lead to reconstruction, but hopes that Bronzeville might be revitalized as the site of an Olympic Village died in October when Chicago lost its bid for the 2016 Summer Games.
The neighborhood’s residential market took a severe hit, and developers have put off major investments. Few developers, it seems, can get serious about new projects in Bronzeville until the City of Chicago reveals plans for the landmark Michael Reese site, 37 acres at the heart of a potentially promising lakefront neighborhood.
Ms. Fischer remains optimistic. Even though the blocks in her neighborhood alternate between new condominiums and empty lots, foot traffic is sparse — and the only shopping center consists mostly of convenience stores and an auto repair shop — she believes greater Bronzeville will have its day.
“I think the neighborhood will continue to grow, considering there’s different people, different races and age groups moving in,” Ms. Fischer said.
Bronzeville was once a thriving “black metropolis” with hundreds of black-owned businesses and a booming night life. Its population swelled during the great migration of Southern blacks seeking jobs after World War I.
The poet Gwendolyn Brooks lived there, and in 1945, her first book of poetry — “A Street in Bronzeville” — brought her instant critical acclaim. Other notable residents included Richard Wright, the author of “Native Son,” and the jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong.
The area’s decline began in the 1950s as it gradually lost its middle class and businesses started to close. Though Bronzeville is unlikely to reclaim its golden era, developers like Keith Giles see the potential for new growth, only he does not expect to reach it any time soon.
Last year, Mr. Giles’s firm, Kargil Development, told the city that it was interested in developing the Olympic Village. The project would have helped Olympics promoters realize their vision of a new neighborhood that could bridge the gap between the resurgent Bronzeville community and the South Loop.
“It was an exciting development opportunity for an international event,” Mr. Giles said.
But with the Olympics impetus gone, banks not lending and no other financing in sight, Mr. Giles does not expect action soon on a Michael Reese site that might cost $1 billion to redevelop.
“The development business right now is on sabbatical,” he said.
While Mr. Giles’s company considers another project nearby, it doesn’t expect to see change soon.. “Unfortunately, most everything has stopped,” Mr. Giles said. “There’s new developments on one block, and you go across the street and there’s a burned-out building.”
Alderman Toni Preckwinkle, whose Fourth Ward includes the Reese campus, expects the city to release its plan for the site early this year. She said that a developer might be selected by the end of the year, but that the first buildings would most likely not be completed until 2012.
Ms. Preckwinkle also said developers would “prefer a clear site” around Michael Reese, casting further doubt on the efforts of preservationists who are fighting to save nearby buildings designed in consultation with the architect Walter Gropius, founder of the influential Bauhaus School.
Bernita Johnson-Gabriel, executive director of the Quad Communities Development Corporation, a neighborhood group that serves the Kenwood, Oakland and Douglas neighborhoods that make up greater Bronzeville, said hurdles to development included concerns about crime that are rooted in racial stereotypes.
“We are a neighborhood of color,” Ms. Johnson-Gabriel said. “There’s a perception of crime that obviously doesn’t quite exist here the way it is portrayed.”
Indeed, crime in the Douglas and neighboring Oakland neighborhoods fell steadily over the past decade, according to Chicago Police Department reports. Statistics show a 67 percent decline for Douglas — to 1,074 crimes in 2009 from 3,290 in 1999 — while Oakland’s number fell by more than half, to fewer than 300 from 611.
Some of the city’s larger development groups are pushing ahead despite a lack of clarity about the city’s plans. One, Draper and Kramer, is proceeding on a 70-acre development just south of Michael Reese that it began planning three years ago. In addition to 2,000 high-rise apartment units, the Lake Meadows project will feature renovation of existing rental units and condominiums, construction of single-family town homes and expansion of a small shopping center on the corner of 35th Street and Cottage Grove.
The firm will keep a close eye on the city’s plan for the Michael Reese site.
“We are very interested because it’s a large development and right next door to our property,” said Donald Vitek, vice president of acquisitions and development for Draper and Kramer.
While some residents and developers want officials to move quickly on the city’s plans for the Reese site, Mr. Vitek said a slower pace made sense. It will allow time to survey current community needs, he said, and possibly wait out a soured housing market.
The Douglas neighborhood’s new condos and town homes are selling for as little as $125 a square foot, a steep discount from similar South Loop properties. But Mr. Vitek predicted a steady increase in demand once the market improves.
An Olympics aftershock is hitting the market for existing homes in the neighborhood, too. Pam Dempsey, a real estate broker for Bronzeville Properties, said home sales came to a standstill during the Olympics bidding process, as property owners waited for the decision on a site. Only after the bid failed did they look to sell.
“They’re now entering into a down market,” Ms. Dempsey said. Prices for single-family homes in the area have declined to $100,000 to $200,000 now from $200,000 to $400,000 in mid-2007, she said. A high foreclosure rate has made the Bronzeville downturn worse than what has hit the South Loop or Hyde Park.
“We’ve experienced a lot of really, really deeply discounted foreclosures,” Ms. Dempsey said. “You’ll have a house that needs a ton of work going for maybe $35,000.”
When development does come, she said, Bronzeville will benefit most if the retail part appeals to the same kind of newly affluent residents as those who have moved into the South Loop and Hyde Park.
“Not the fast-food stuff we already have around here,” Ms. Dempsey said, “but nicer retail, like the stuff that came to the South Loop over the past 5 to 10 years. A wine shop or a cafe or bookstores — these things will keep people in the neighborhood.”
Joseph Schwietermann, director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University, warned against easy comparisons between Bronzeville and the Hyde Park and South Loop neighborhoods. He attributes a combination of poor post-World War II urban planning and Bronzeville’s history of slow growth as factors that have made Bronzeville less successful.
“It’s easier to invest in housing with the hopes that retail will follow,” Mr. Schwietermann said. But, he added, “you can’t assume that if you build it, they will come.”
In October, contractors hired by the city began tearing down the first of seven buildings on the Michael Reese campus slated for demolition. The timeline for development is not urgent, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Community Development said, because the city will not begin making mortgage payments on the property until 2014.
The department envisions a large-scale residential and retail complex with a mixture of affordable and market-rate housing, in addition to dry cleaners, coffee shops and other staple businesses of neighborhood life. Its stated goal is “to build a community from scratch,” and stimulate redevelopment on the lakefront south of McCormick Place.
Byron Lindsey, manager of an auto repair shop, has seen little retail growth around the garage he has managed for nearly 20 years in what is now the Lake Meadows shopping center.
But his business is down only slightly despite the slow economy, Mr. Lindsey said as he juggled a phone in each hand and spoke to customers from behind the counter. He has perceived an influx of higher-income residents over the past five years, which he expects will contribute to a comeback once the economy recovers.
Redevelopment of the Michael Reese property could be the key.
“It could really determine whether the community gets a kick-start on its way back,” Mr. Lindsey said.
Rachel Cromidas is a Chicago freelance writer. Ben Goldberger contributed reporting.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
By Me
This blog has been silent all week, the first week of classes, but I've been working pretty hard. You could say I've been leading a double-life of sorts, one in which I'm a full-time student at the University of Chicago, and the other in which I'm a freelance journalist, sneaking off to the bathroom during class to answer phone calls from my editors.
Tomorrow, my 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. work-week is starting to pay-off, and I'm thrilled. Here's a hint:
Yup, all 14 letters of me, and 1,200 or so words more to come Sunday morning!
Tomorrow, my 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. work-week is starting to pay-off, and I'm thrilled. Here's a hint:
Yup, all 14 letters of me, and 1,200 or so words more to come Sunday morning!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Gardening for Peace
New story about two awesome UChicago alumns and their aid work in Africa—they helped farmers build a sustainable vegetable garden in a village with limited fresh food access:
Rebecca Thal began gardening in a small herb patch in the backyard of her childhood home. But she never imagined that her hobby would help improve the lives of villagers in South Africa’s Limpopo province.
Thal and Aliza Levine, both AB ’09, headed to South Africa in the summer of 2009 to create a sustainable community garden for the residents of the Hamakuya village as winners of the Davis Projects for Peace prize.
Davis Projects for Peace was started three years ago by philanthropist Kathryn Davis, who provides $10,000 each for 100 projects devised by U.S. college students. The University of Chicago is one of 90 colleges and universities to participate in the program, according to Jen Bess, a college adviser. Applications for the 2010 program are due January 8, 2010 at noon.
“The goal of our project is to increase food security in the region,” Levine said. “Part of the reason food security is so important is because of HIV rates. It’s important that people who are taking antiretrovirals or have symptoms get adequate nutrition.”
Levine and Thal partnered with David Bunn, a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, whom they met while studying abroad in Cape Town in winter 2008. Bunn is the co-founder of Tshulu Trust, a non-profit organization that studies ecological resources in communities surrounding Kruger National Park, like Hamakuya.
Though the trust had been working to set up small businesses and create jobs in ecotourism for the community, it did not have the resources to create a much-needed indigenous plant garden. “We just asked them how we could help,” Thal said.
Cape Town study abroad
Levine and Thal received their first introduction to Hamakuya when they stayed in a village compound during the Cape Town study abroad program, where they studied anthropology and African civilizations.
“I think a lot of anthropology [views the world] through a distancing mechanism. One of the reasons the Cape Town program was so great…was that just being in the new environment prevented that from happening,” Levine said.
For Thal, the quarter abroad not only exposed her to a different part of the world, it helped her define her studies back on campus as well.
“The Cape Town trip was the most intense and the most rewarding part of my time [at the University],” she said. “It changed my intellectual engagement with the world.”
The Davis Project caught Thal’s eye when she returned. “I was looking for any way I could get back to South Africa,” she said.
The committee from the College that selected the nominees for the Davis Projects for Peace prize was particularly impressed with Levine and Thal’s proposal.
“We wanted to see that students had been thoughtful about how their proposal connected to the idea of peace, and [Levine and Thal] did a nice job of tying that to the issue of food security,” Bess said. “It’s hard to have a life of peace when you are desperate for basic necessities like food.”
Unfinished business
After her first experience in South Africa, “I wanted to see more, not just of the political life but the day-to-day life in the rural parts,” Thal said.
The pair wanted to experience more of village life in Limpopo. But they also felt they had unfinished business with the community and the Tshulu Trust, which hadn’t been able to start up a food security program by the time they left.
“We saw firsthand how food was integrated into everyday life, and the lack of diversity of food sources,” Levine said.
To address these problems of public health and food access in South Africa, Thal and Levine spent 6 weeks in Hamakuya in July and August. For their primary project, they helped four farmers construct a vegetable garden with a sustainable irrigation system called circle farming.
Thal and Levine found the support of community members invaluable to the success of their project.
“We thought we would get over jet lag on day one and then start the project on day two,” Thal said. “But it took something like three weeks for us to build relationships and get a strong foothold in the community.”
The nearest village had only a dozen households, and Thal and Levine were among the few residents with a car. “We kind of became a taxi service, giving people rides when they asked,” Thal said.
Other locals gravitated to them out of curiosity, or a desire to help.
“One older man took on this informal advisory role for us. He would come by with his dogs and say hello; [he] told us what he’d seen and heard and taught us some of the language. Just hearing what [neighbors] wanted to get out of it helped us refine our approach. We didn’t put shovels in the ground until much later.”
Levine believes their work could have a lasting impact on the community. “There is very little rainfall, so their growing season is very short, and that makes it difficult to have long-term food security,” Levine said. “But the farmers were excited, and the best thing is this [method] is easy to replicate—the farmers have already made a commitment to show others in the community.”
Rebecca Thal began gardening in a small herb patch in the backyard of her childhood home. But she never imagined that her hobby would help improve the lives of villagers in South Africa’s Limpopo province.
Thal and Aliza Levine, both AB ’09, headed to South Africa in the summer of 2009 to create a sustainable community garden for the residents of the Hamakuya village as winners of the Davis Projects for Peace prize.
Davis Projects for Peace was started three years ago by philanthropist Kathryn Davis, who provides $10,000 each for 100 projects devised by U.S. college students. The University of Chicago is one of 90 colleges and universities to participate in the program, according to Jen Bess, a college adviser. Applications for the 2010 program are due January 8, 2010 at noon.
“The goal of our project is to increase food security in the region,” Levine said. “Part of the reason food security is so important is because of HIV rates. It’s important that people who are taking antiretrovirals or have symptoms get adequate nutrition.”
Levine and Thal partnered with David Bunn, a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, whom they met while studying abroad in Cape Town in winter 2008. Bunn is the co-founder of Tshulu Trust, a non-profit organization that studies ecological resources in communities surrounding Kruger National Park, like Hamakuya.
Though the trust had been working to set up small businesses and create jobs in ecotourism for the community, it did not have the resources to create a much-needed indigenous plant garden. “We just asked them how we could help,” Thal said.
Cape Town study abroad
Levine and Thal received their first introduction to Hamakuya when they stayed in a village compound during the Cape Town study abroad program, where they studied anthropology and African civilizations.
“I think a lot of anthropology [views the world] through a distancing mechanism. One of the reasons the Cape Town program was so great…was that just being in the new environment prevented that from happening,” Levine said.
For Thal, the quarter abroad not only exposed her to a different part of the world, it helped her define her studies back on campus as well.
“The Cape Town trip was the most intense and the most rewarding part of my time [at the University],” she said. “It changed my intellectual engagement with the world.”
The Davis Project caught Thal’s eye when she returned. “I was looking for any way I could get back to South Africa,” she said.
The committee from the College that selected the nominees for the Davis Projects for Peace prize was particularly impressed with Levine and Thal’s proposal.
“We wanted to see that students had been thoughtful about how their proposal connected to the idea of peace, and [Levine and Thal] did a nice job of tying that to the issue of food security,” Bess said. “It’s hard to have a life of peace when you are desperate for basic necessities like food.”
Unfinished business
After her first experience in South Africa, “I wanted to see more, not just of the political life but the day-to-day life in the rural parts,” Thal said.
The pair wanted to experience more of village life in Limpopo. But they also felt they had unfinished business with the community and the Tshulu Trust, which hadn’t been able to start up a food security program by the time they left.
“We saw firsthand how food was integrated into everyday life, and the lack of diversity of food sources,” Levine said.
To address these problems of public health and food access in South Africa, Thal and Levine spent 6 weeks in Hamakuya in July and August. For their primary project, they helped four farmers construct a vegetable garden with a sustainable irrigation system called circle farming.
Thal and Levine found the support of community members invaluable to the success of their project.
“We thought we would get over jet lag on day one and then start the project on day two,” Thal said. “But it took something like three weeks for us to build relationships and get a strong foothold in the community.”
The nearest village had only a dozen households, and Thal and Levine were among the few residents with a car. “We kind of became a taxi service, giving people rides when they asked,” Thal said.
Other locals gravitated to them out of curiosity, or a desire to help.
“One older man took on this informal advisory role for us. He would come by with his dogs and say hello; [he] told us what he’d seen and heard and taught us some of the language. Just hearing what [neighbors] wanted to get out of it helped us refine our approach. We didn’t put shovels in the ground until much later.”
Levine believes their work could have a lasting impact on the community. “There is very little rainfall, so their growing season is very short, and that makes it difficult to have long-term food security,” Levine said. “But the farmers were excited, and the best thing is this [method] is easy to replicate—the farmers have already made a commitment to show others in the community.”
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