WBEZ | Austin

Chicago church offers theater as therapy

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 05:00:00 -0600

The stage at St. Martin's Episcopal Church is split into two halves.

On stage right, a newlywed couple crosses the threshold. On stage left, the same couple grows old and spiteful in their daughter’s home, 30 years later.

The play, Karma, tells the tale of a couple's struggle with violence and alcoholism, and its ugly aftermath. It centers around double characters and a storyline that alternates between two time periods.

Playwright Senyah Haynes, said these dualities woven into her play are intentional. They are meant to remind the audience that people aren't all good or all bad.

“Lovely people do some really evil things. People who are really horrible can be really kind to a stranger,” Haynes said. “You can’t just box people in.”

Director Raina Long said the story is also meant to be a bitter dose of medicine for the surrounding Austin neighborhood.The area has seen ongoing gang violence and nearly 1,000 violent crimes so far this year, according to Chicago police statistics.

Long and parishioner Derrick Dawson started the theater at St. Martin’s two years ago to offer artistic healing for the neighborhood and a safe place for its youth.

“Arts funding on the West Side is very hard to come by,” Long said. “There aren’t a lot of extra-curricular activities for young people on this side of town in general.”

Austin’s YMCA, a popular hangout for local teens, closed in October. Neighbors are worried that the lack of options could lead teens to other activities, like selling drugs on the corner.

“Being able to see this story and then hopefully relate to it in some way, I hope will give the audience an opportunity to perhaps heal some of the hurts they may have going on,” Long said.

In Karma, the characters Queen and Ezekiel have a painful memory that haunts them in old age: The young Ezekiel beats Queen, his pregnant wife, in a drunken rage. He mistakenly thinks the baby she's carrying isn't his, but the audience knows that Ezekiel is killing his own son. The lights dim on a bloodied Queen, lying on the ground.

Backstage, 19-year-old Jasmine Derosier is working the sound and lighting. When she watches the beat-down scene, she remembers experiences involving her own family. She saw her cousin's pregnant 16-year-old friend get beaten by her boyfriend.

“He hit the girl with a bottle to her stomach, and the next thing you know, we saw this girl with blood going down her legs,” Derosies said.

She said seeing the play and interacting with the cast has taught her to think before acting.

“I can calm myself down by remembering some stuff from the play,” Derosies said. Before, she said, "I know I treat(ed) my little brothers like they're little rugrats, kick(ed) them around a little bit."

Now, she said, she tries to "think about what you're doing before you do it." She thinks other people from the neighborhood could relate to the play and learn from it, too, like her mom.

"The way she treats me and my little brothers, it's all this anger towards us. But here and there she'll be playing with us, then the next thing you know, she's back angry," Derosiers said. "If you ask me, watching this play, she'd just sit down and think about it."

St. Martin's parishioner Anita Haskell said she hasn't experienced the kind of physical abuse the play shows, but seeing it took her back to difficult relationships from the past.

"It's very close to the bone, really," Haskell said. "We had one congregation member walk out because he couldn't take it."

In Karma, Queen leaves Ezekiel and flees to Chicago to protect her daughters from their abusive father. Thirty years later, Queen and her old husband are stuck back together in their daughter's house because they can't afford a nursing home.

Warren Feagins plays the older Ezekiel.

“He’s a character who’s like most of us,” Feagins said. “We appear to be mostly one thing on the surface, but underneath there’s a lot going on."

Feagins said his character could help people understand the violent tendencies in everyone.

“Sometimes I look out into the audience, and I really wish that there were more people here from the community,” Feagins said. He grew up in public housing in Chicago at the Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green.

“(There are) some people here that need to get the message but unfortunately don’t know about it, or there are things going on in their lives that prevent them from coming,” Feagins said.

The play manages to end on a positive note: It implies Queen and Ezekiel are able to end the cycle of domestic violence. After three decades of separation, Queen eventually forgives Ezekiel for his actions.

Karma closes with a young bride's joyful laughter, and the two sides of the severed stage, the past and the present, coming together.

Alderman accuses bank of ‘redlining’

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 05:51:00 -0500

An alderman on Chicago’s struggling West Side is steamed about a plan by Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp to close a full-service branch in her neighborhood.

Ald. Emma Mitts (37th Ward) said the company’s decision to shut down its U.S. Bank outlet at 4909 W. Division St. blindsided her. “They’re leaving high-and-dry with no warning,” she said, calling the process “disrespectful.”

The branch is an anchor of Austin, a mostly African-American neighborhood hit hard over the years by factory closings and, more recently, home foreclosures.

But Mitts said there is still plenty of banking business for company officials to keep the branch open. “The money is good but they don’t want to be in the neighborhood,” she said. “That’s redlining.”

U.S. Bancorp spokesman Tom Joyce bristled at the alderman’s accusation. “It’s off base and unfortunate,” he said.

“In 2011, we put more than $152 million into affordable housing and economic development in metropolitan Chicago,” Joyce said. “We’re a proud citizen of the Chicago area and the Austin neighborhood and we’ll continue to serve the neighborhood.”

When the branch closes November 16, Joyce added, the company will leave an ATM and start shuttling seniors from that part of Austin to nearby U.S. Bank locations two or three times a month.

The branch on the chopping block was once part of Park National Bank, a commercial chain owned by Oak Park-based FBOP Corp. The chain was known for charity and investment in low-income areas. U.S. Bancorp acquired FBOP holdings as part of a 2009 federal rescue.

Austin community groups fought the U.S. Bancorp takeover. In 2011, bowing to pressure from the groups, the company agreed to put hundreds of thousands of dollars into affordable-housing efforts in Austin and Maywood, a nearby suburb.

U.S. Bancorp says it has 88 branches and 1,600 workers in the Chicago area.

The Island, past and present

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 05:00:00 -0500

The Chicago neighborhood known as The Island is only about eight miles from the Loop. But it’s the kind of place you won’t find unless you are looking for it. And even then, you might miss it.

Go straight west out Madison Street. Just before you hit the suburbs, you arrive in Austin. This is Community Area #25, one of the city’s largest in both area and population. The Island is the far southwest corner of Austin.

Why call this neighborhood The Island? The name is explained by geography.

First of all, The Island is cut off from the rest of Chicago. To the north is Columbus Park and the Eisenhower Expressway – and even before the expressway was built, there were three rail lines at grade level here. Directly to the east is a major factory area.

So much for the connection to Chicago. What about the other two sides? To the south is a suburb, Cicero. To the west is another suburb, Oak Park.

The result is an isolated neighborhood totally surrounded by alien territory–an island.

The precise boundaries of The Island are vague. Some locals claim that only the five residential streets count. Others want to include all of Census Tract 8314. To make things simpler, I’m declaring that The Island is the area bounded by Austin, the Eisenhower, Central and Roosevelt.

When the Town of Austin was annexed by Chicago in 1899, The (future) Island came with it. Then the area was mostly vacant. The "L" came through shortly afterward, and the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin interurban line. The 12th Street (Roosevelt Road) streetcar line was also extended to Austin Boulevard.

The 1920s were the years for building. The blocks east of Austin Boulevard were filled in with bungalows and two-flats. The other side of Menard Avenue was zoned for factories. A ribbon commercial strip developed along Roosevelt Road. Around this time people began referring to the neighborhood as The Island.

A monumental event in local history took place on April 27, 1926. William McSwiggin, an assistant state’s attorney, was gunned down as he left a speakeasy at 5615 West Roosevelt Road. The crime made national news and was never solved. Technically, McSwiggin died on the Cicero side of Roosevelt–but the killers did drive by on the Chicago side!

As a matter of record, two of The Island's most famous residents were gangsters. Ralph Capone and Sam Giancana both lived in the little enclave before moving to the suburbs. My onetime pastor, Father Bob McLaughlin, grew up in The Island some years later, so perhaps that evens things out.

The Island was historically a white area. In 1984 the neighborhood made ugly headlines when an African-American family who'd moved in was harassed and driven out. Today the population is integrated.

In 2012 The Island is home to about 1,700 people. The residential streets look much the same as always – quiet, clean and well-tended. The most notable changes have taken place in the industrial zone. Though some factories remain, many have been replaced by other types of business.

A small shopping plaza has opened at Roosevelt and Central. The old Victor Products factory has been replaced by Hartgrove Hospital. Along Taylor Street, Chicago Studio City operates a 100,000-square-foot facility with three soundstages, the biggest film-making plant between the coasts.

The Island is also home to Olson Rug Company. Older Chicagoans fondly remember the park at the company's former headquarters on Pulaski Road. Now that the industrial land is being revitalized, is there a waterfall in the future for The Island?

A unique street sign?

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 06:00:00 -0500

I started taking pictures around Chicago in the 1950s, when I was still in grade school. Things only got worse when I went to work and could afford a good camera.

Going through some old slides recently, I ran across this picture. It is not a photo-shopped joke. Once upon a time, the City of Chicago really did nail a couple of street signs into a tree.

The location was a few feet into Columbus Park, where the busses from the Central and Harrison lines have their turn-around. I remember seeing the sign there for many years. When the city switched over to green street signs, they finally decided to invest in a pole. I don't know long the tree lasted.

This was the only tree street-sign that I ever saw in Chicago. But if anybody has memories of others, let me know.

Loretto Hospital registered nurses vote to unionize

Wed, 30 May 2012 16:16:00 -0500

Updated June 6, 2012, to include hospital management comments.

A union that has been trying for a decade to gain a foothold among hospital nurses in Chicago has won an election to represent 144 of them in the Austin neighborhood.

Registered nurses at Loretto Hospital voted 80-37 to bring in Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The two-day vote, which ended Saturday, allows AFSCME to negotiate the pay, benefits and work conditions of RNs at the hospital’s main facility, 645 S. Central Ave.

“If you don’t have happy nurses, you don’t have happy patients,” said Kora Fields, an RN in the hospital’s behavioral health unit who says she voted for the union.

“I live in the Austin area,” Fields said. “I grew up in the Austin area. My family comes to this hospital. My friends are treated here. I do love Loretto Hospital. But there needs to be increases in wages and we need to be respected as the professionals that we are.”

An AFSCME statement says pro-union nurses defied an “aggressive anti-union campaign” by Loretto management. The statement praises the nurses for their “unwavering determination to improve patient care and ensure fair treatment on the job.”

Loretto spokesman Jim Waller called the hospital’s nurse wages “competitive for the marketplace” and denied that management campaigned against AFSCME. “We were just being clear what being in a union is and that what’s paramount to us is patient safety,” he said.

Loretto, a 187-bed nonprofit facility, has helped lead an effort this year to exempt Illinois safety-net hospitals from proposed state Medicaid payment cuts.

The vote, supervised by the National Labor Relations Board, makes Loretto the second Chicago hospital whose registered nurses have unionized this year. In January, National Nurses United won an election to represent 150 at the South Side’s Jackson Park Hospital and Medical Center.

Until the Jackson Park election, unions had made little progress in Chicago-area hospitals except those owned by university and government entities.

The Loretto vote marks a rebound for AFSCME, which lost a bruising election battle last summer at the Northwest Side’s Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center. RNs at that hospital voted against AFSCME after more than eight years of campaigning by the union.

'Safe Highways'--a 1925 traffic safety film

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:15:00 -0600

Today's film was produced in 1925 by the CTA's predecessor, Chicago Surface Lines. CSL wanted to educate the public on traffic safety, and was willing to smash a lot of cars to do so. As a result, much of the film is unintentionally hilarious.

What's interesting to the historian is the street scenes from nearly 90 years ago. The downtown sites are easy to identify. But the film also goes out into the neighborhoods. I've been able to place a few of these outlying locations (see below). If anyone recognizes other sites, let me know in the comments section.

1:50--Archer Ave at RR just east of Cicero. Conductor is flagging the streetcar across the tracks.

2:10--Cicero Ave at 22nd St (Cermak Rd). The old Western Electric complex is clearly visible. Notice that CSL ran two-car trains on some of the busier routes.

3:15--Cicero Ave at Erie. The Lucille Theater was at 653 N. Cicero Ave.

7:00--Possibly North Avenue. The center-of-the-street trolley poles are a clue.

8:14--Traffic signals were new in 1925, and the public was still getting used to them

9:20--Either Broadway or Clark Street. The streetcar is signed for Route 1.

Chicago invades a suburb

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:15:00 -0500

It was hard-ball politics, Chicago style.

On this October 24th in 1899, the City of Chicago took over the independent Town of Austin - and Austin didn't like it one bit.

The people of Austin had wanted to keep their community of 4,000 separate from the big, bad city. A referendum had been held, and a majority of Austin voters voted against joining Chicago. But now it was happening anyway. The whole thing was un-American!

The story begins in 1865, when the Austin subdivision was created in the open prairie along the Chicago & North Western railroad line, seven miles west on Lake Street from downtown Chicago. The area was part of Cicero Township. Besides Austin, the township included the settlements of Cicero, Berwyn, and Oak Park.

Austin grew fast. In 1870, the Cicero Township Hall was built in the community at Lake and Central. Everything remained peaceful until 1898, when the Lake Street Elevated Railroad arrived on the scene.

The 'L' company wanted to extend its line from Chicago west to Austin Boulevard. The Town of Austin favored the extension, but the rest of Cicero Township did not. Since Austin controlled township government, the extension was approved.

That did it.

The rest of Cicero Township was tired of being pushed around by those snobs at Lake and Central. So they hatched a plot to get rid of Austin.

The City of Chicago was already eager to add more territory. And Austin was a nice, semi-affluent community with an attractive tax base. Petitions were gathered, and a referendum on the annexation of Austin was held on April 5, 1899.

The law said a majority of a township's voters had to approve any take-over by Chicago. More than half the voters within Austin rejected the annexation. But the rest of Cicero Township voted to let Chicago take Austin, by a huge margin. That was just enough to tip the outcome.

The anti-annexation Austin group was furious. They went to court and filed appeals. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled the referendum was binding. Like it or not, Austin was going to become part of Chicago

And so it was. On the evening of October 24th, Cicero Township police were withdrawn from Austin, replaced by 21 Chicago cops. Meanwhile, five Chicago firemen settled into the local fire house and began playing checkers. No resistance was encountered.

Though more than a century has passed since annexation, the Austin community still calls its park field house the Town Hall. And the 'L' line that started the whole ruckus now runs all the way through the Village of Oak Park.

With grocery bus, West Siders jump on health bandwagon

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:16:00 -0500

There’s a novel solution bringing relief to food deserts on Chicago’s West Side.

Sparing the expense of building a bricks and mortar grocery, a group has transformed a decommissioned CTA bus into a mobile, one-aisle produce mart. Fresh Moves Mobile Market carries a mix of conventional and organic fruits and vegetables to parts of Chicago that lack grocery stores and other viable options for healthy eating.

We caught up with the bus at the first of its Wednesday stops, in front of the Lawndale Christian Health Center on West Ogden Avenue.

Right now, Fresh Moves is in service two days a week, rotating between locations in North Lawndale and Austin. The climate-controlled bus will allow them to operate year-round, and Sheelah Muhammad, Fresh Move’s board secretary, says they hope to expand to six days a week. “We want to be like the ice cream truck,” Muhammad says. “You hear the bell and everyone comes running.”

The project’s senior manager, Dara Cooper, 33, says Fresh Moves uses standards set by the Environmental Work Group to determine which fruits and vegetables they should carry as organic. “All of the fruits and vegetables that are heavily sprayed with pesticides - kale, collards, cherries, nectarines - we try to buy organic,” Cooper says. “Oranges, bananas, those kinds of things we can buy conventional.”

Fresh Moves hopes to address a critical problem facing neighborhoods across Chicago.

A 2006 study found that African-Americans in Chicago had the fewest options when it came to grocery shopping, and that black neighborhoods like North Lawndale were among the most cut off from fresh produce. Mari Gallagher, the study’s author, found that in a typical African-American block, “the nearest grocery store is roughly twice as distant as the nearest fast food restaurant.” The impact, Gallagher writes, is severe: “Communities that have no or distant grocery stores…will likely have increased premature death and chronic health conditions.”

Fresh Moves must keep prices competitive if they want to be a viable option for people in the low-income neighborhoods that most need their help. Theodore Thompson, 36, had just finished his morning run when he stepped onto the bus looking for something “nice and juicy” to help him rehydrate. Thompson lives in Lawndale and runs an afterschool program at nearby Lawndale Community Church. He says he found the prices on the bus to be very reasonable, “They actually beat the prices in some of the stores that I shop in,” he says, citing Sam’s Club, Food For Less and Jewel as places where he would normally go. “I’m looking at the mangoes. In the store you might have to pay $1.50 [per mango]. Here, it’s one dollar for one mango!

Sales associate Jessica White weighs oranges at the register. In addition to cash and debit cards, Fresh Moves was recently approved to accept the Illinois LINK card, which allows food stamp recipients to pay for purchases electronically.

Sales associate Feguier Epps, 33, helps customer Caritina Almanza, 24, with her purchase. Almanza, who lives on the South Side in Chicago’s West Lawn neighborhood, is one of several health center employees who shop on the bus. She is also a social worker who works with mothers and infants who has been recommending the bus to her clients. “I actually told one of my clients about it yesterday; She got excited,” Almanza says. “Having little ones, she’s trying to teach her baby to eat well.”

Marcella Fermoso, 48, lives in Oak Park, IL and works at the Lawndale Christian Health Center in the case management department. She prefers to buy organic, but finds stores like Whole Foods too expensive. “I’m coming back for sure,” she says.

You can catch the bus Wednesdays and Thursdays for now. Click here for the full schedule.

The sounds and scene at South by Southwest

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:48:00 -0500

South by Southwest came to a close on Sunday. The annual festival in Austin, Texas, is both a group hug for the industry and a giant spectacle for fans. There were old and new bands. And old bands anew – this year saw comebacks from bands like The Strokes, Kid Rock and even Duran Duran.

To sort it all out, Sound Opinions co-host and WBEZ music blogger Jim DeRogatis spoke to Eight Forty-Eight.

Housing groups salute banking giant for rehab deal

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:59:00 -0600

One of the nation’s largest banks Friday provided details about an agreement with some nonprofit groups in Chicago-area neighborhoods devastated by foreclosures.

The deal, revealed Wednesday by WBEZ, stems from the collapse of Oak Park-based banking chain FBOP Corp. The company’s flagship, Park National Bank, was known for donations and loans in low-income areas. In 2009, federal authorities took over FBOP and sold it to Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, the parent of U.S. Bank.

U.S. Bancorp said it couldn’t fill Park National’s shoes in the community. After protests, though, the banking giant last fall started negotiating with a coalition of nonprofit housing groups. The two sides reached a deal a few weeks ago and kept it quiet until this week.

U.S. Bancorp is promising $600,000 in interest-free loans this year to buy six foreclosed homes in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood and Maywood, a suburb nearby. Community groups will then renovate them and sell them at cost. If the effort breaks even, U.S. Bancorp will lend another $800,000 next year and $1 million more in 2013, bringing the total to $2.4 million.

To celebrate the deal, U.S. Bancorp officials flew in for a gathering outside an Oak Park branch Friday. They included Richard Hartnack, vice-chairman of the company’s consumer and small-business banking.

Could this agreement be a model for banks and community groups to soften effects of the nation’s housing crisis? Or is the deal just a U.S. Bancorp public-relations ploy? We got a chance to ask Hartnack at the celebration and included his responses in this WBEZ segment:

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