Anne Marie Miles Receives Support from Local Ministers in Fifth Ward Races

posted by chicago pop

A press release from the Anne Marie Miles campaign:

Disgruntled South Shore Residents Rally around Candidate

CHICAGO – February 19, 2011– Anne Marie Miles, candidate for Fifth Ward Alderman, has been receiving resounding support for her campaign by a number of South Side ministers and South Shore residents resolute in removing incumbent Leslie Hairston from office.

With her campaign office on 71^st Street, in the heart of the South Shore neighborhood, Anne Marie Miles has positioned herself as a viable challenger to current alderman Hairston. A recent pastor’s luncheon given in her honor was led by Pastor Martin of Grace and Peace Ministry, Bishop Jakes; Pastor Earnest Franklin; Rev. Dukes; Pastor Elaine Smothers; Pastor V. Johnson; Evangelist Dora Jones; Rev. Larry Johnson; Pastor Shirley Hall and Dr. L. Whatley. The ministers endorsed Anne Marie Miles for Fifth Ward Alderman and prayed for her success.

The support for Miles in the community is so strong that Archbishop Lucius Hall who heads the Broadcast Ministers Alliance of Chicago, invited Miles to be interviewed on his radio and cable TV shows. The cable TV show “Broadcast Minister Alliance Presents” will air four times this weekend on Channel 25 and on WGRB-AM 390.

Those that thought that Miles would not connect with South Shore residents do not understand the Fifth Ward, noted Miles. “To imply that my campaign would not resonate with all voters, including those who live in South Shore, Grand Crossing and Woodlawn, underestimates the intelligence of people who have simply had enough from an alderman whose accomplishments are minimalistic at best.” Miles continued, “South Shore and Hyde Park have a rich history that has been diminished by a career politician whose office is just blocks away from abandoned buildings, empty lots, and one of the hot spots for crime in the city.”

Miles ran a successful Elder Law practice for some twenty years, in which she advocated for the rights of, and improved the conditions of the elderly and incapacitated. Additionally Miles holds a Masters of Public Administration from Long Island College and an LLM in Tax Law from John Marshall law School.

Anne Marie Miles is an advocate and community activist who is involved with parent associations and local community groups focused on improving children’s lives and reducing teen violence. Miles is the former Secretary and President of the University of Chicago Comer Hospital Service Committee, and has worked for Chicago Volunteer Legal Services providing free legal services to lower income residents. She is currently on the steering committee of Safe Youth Chicago of the Union League Club of Chicago.

Robust Coffee Lounge: Caffeine in an Urban Fastness

posted by chicago pop

One of Hyde Park - Kenwood - Woodlawn's newest cool things is in the lower left-hand corner of the above building: Robust Coffee Lounge. We've been flagrantly remiss in not heralding its arrival much, much sooner. Chicago Weekly has a very nice write-up of Robust here. Neighbor blogger Woodlawn Wonder gives her personal take on it here.

So, after several friendly proddings from readers, we finally made it down to their corner location on 63rd and Woodlawn -- where, as a rosy-cheeked youth I walked in days of yore, neath the dappled sunlight of a cacophonous elevated rail spur, in search of Harold's Chicken -- to find that we weren't the only ones retracing our footsteps.

For the most interesting thing about Robust Coffee Lounge-- where, despite the name, it is hoped they do not brew robusta coffee beans -- is actually the owner Jake Sapstein's backstory. In opening up Robust, Sapstein is retracing footsteps of his own. Talk to him for a little bit and you'll quickly realize that he knows the South Side. The reason is that his family owned a chain of pharmacies throughout the area, back in the day when Walgreens was not the only game in town.

It's clear that running a small business, and entrepreneurial spirit, are in his blood; so is running a store on the South Side of Chicago.


I mention all of this because I couldn't help but wonder, approaching the building in this photograph from the north, surrounded as it is by enormous tracts of empty land, who would have the guts to open up here. Not just because it's kind of scary at night (ask Jake, he'll tell you), but because commercially it's deserted, and business loves company. The whole story has a sort of poetry: the old threads of social fabric, torn for over half a century, have been stitched together again on one particular street corner. With any luck, so we are told, Sapstein and his business partner may open up a restaurant next door.

And the coffee? Well, if you've gotten used to Z&H, you may be a little let down. Then again, Sapstein's aim is not to be a solo foodie boutique, but to grow and make money -- full-disclosure to Old-Guard Hyde Park anti-capitalists. But the baked goods are all locally sourced, and everything on the deli menu -- which is substantial, and includes staples that you can't get in Hyde Park anymore, like chicken salad -- is made in-house. "We want to be a curator for local vendors," Jake told me.

Seems to be working so far. Go check it out, if you haven't already.

Jack and the Beanstalk

posted by chicago pop

Forwarded by an Honest and Honorable reader:

From: Jack Spicer
Date: Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 8:56 PM
Subject: community garden demolition
To:


Dear 61st Street Community Gardeners and Friends --

Most of you now know that the University of Chicago intends to demolish the community garden at 61st Street and Dorchester Avenue shortly after Halloween. Many of you have responded to the news. You have expressed sadness at the potential loss and frustration and disappointment with the University. A number of you also asked questions that I will try to answer.

But first, Jamie Kalven has interviewed many gardeners in their plots at the garden. The video of the interviews, The Garden Conversations, is now being published, a few conversations per day, at www.invisibleinstitute.com. If you would like to be interviewed or have thoughts you want to share with Jamie, please contact him at com>. Please pass this site to as many people as you can. The "conversations" tell the real story about the value of the garden.

And second, in today's Tribune Dawn Trice talks with gardener Deb Hammond about how the community garden has affected her life. Here is a link to the story:
www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-trice-12-oct12,0,557747.column


And now the questions:

Is it really "essential" to use the garden for construction staging?

No, I doubt it's essential. Maybe "convenient" and it would probably save a little money, but the CTS building, a block away, could certainly be built without demolishing the garden. Contractors build skyscrapers in the Loop without even blocking the public sidewalk. Any independent professional construction manager could verify that the garden site is not essential to constructing the CTS building. We would encourage the University to submit the issue to an independent professional.


Is the Chicago Theological Seminary causing the demolition of the garden?

No, they made a verbal agreement with the UofC that no harm would come to the garden as a result of their new building being built. They were looking forward to having the garden as a neighbor for their sustainable building. The University unilaterally withdrew from that agreement. We've spoken to the new CTS dean, Alice Hunt, and found her to be honest and honorable. I think CTS has done what it can do to protect the garden from the UofC's construction project. I plan to attend the CTS groundbreaking on Thursday as a friend and (current) neighbor.


Isn't it UofC's private property, and can't they do anything they want?

The garden site certainly is their property and they have generously let us use it for the past ten years. We had hoped the contribution the garden has made to the community would be apparent, and the University would act as a good neighbor and allow the garden to live on. Good neighbors and good will are valuable things, not to be wasted. But we had also hoped they would see the garden as serving their own best interests by enriching the neighborhood where their students, staff and faculty want to live.


What's the real reason the UofC is demolishing the garden?

I don't know. I doubt it's a practical decision based solely on construction convenience. The social fallout -- unhappy gardeners, neighbors, students, and faculty; skepticism about the UofC's commitment to sustainability and to living convivially with its Woodlawn neighbors; bad press; etc. -- far outweighs the temporary convenience. It's more likely that it's a policy decision from the Office of Civic Engagement and from the President. But I don't know what their real reason is or what message they intend to send. It remains a mystery.


Thanks,
-- Jack Spicer


Please check the garden website, www.61streetgarden.com for updates. You can make comments or ask questions there at "info."

I hope you enjoy "The Garden Conversations" at: www.invisibleinstitute.com.

I'm told there is a Facebook group at: "bulldozers versus 61st Street Community Garden"

Gentrification, From a Woodlawn Perspective

posted by chicago pop

Very Nice Map of Woodlawn

Woodlawn Wonder, one of our happy band of local South Side bloggers, shares an interesting take on gentrification in Woodlawn from the perspective of a black "urban pioneer" in a largely black neighborhood, in conversation with mostly young folks, some white, affiliated with the University of Chicago, who feel guilty about it.

Fascinating, Captain. It scrambles a lot of the usual categories we use to think about this issue.

Here's an excerpt, since I'm lazy, and it's a good read. Or just check out the blog it comes from, where you'll also get the latest skinny on the 3 new farmer's markets (see the Tribune's article also) opening up on the south side food desert.

Woodlawn Wonder reflects on the gentrification panel:

Naturally I was curious about one’s role in gentrification since it’s a much discussed and vilified topic these days. Since I’m a condo owner and by definition a gentrifier in Woodlawn, I had to stick my head in and see what all of this was about.

Perhaps I was slightly disappointed because of the un-preparedness of the panel.

Perhaps I was slightly disappointed because of the sparse turnout.

But one thing struck me as the discussion progressed, I’d bet you a million dollars that you’d never see a group of educated successful Black people beat themselves up over gentrifying a neighborhood.

Some say gentrifying, I say improving.

The panel was in the process of developing a brochure about responsible gentrifying. There seemed to be a lot of hand wringing by some people about gentrification in general.

People in attendance and the panel realized that good intentions and your personal budget often collide. As a result of finances and due to some people’s personal living preferences they have to (or choose to) live in “emerging neighborhoods.”

That’s a nice way of saying minority neighborhoods

I think it’s awfully conscious of the people at the forum to be concerned about being responsible gentrifiers.

But as far as I’m concerned, it’s called being a good neighbor.

And as we all know, you can’t teach consideration, manners or good taste.

Well maybe you can try.

What I think the young people in that room may not have considered that change is a constant in Chicago neighborhoods.

Humbolt Park wasn’t always Hispanic. Woodlawn wasn’t always Black. Some parts of Old Town and River North used to be the “red light district.”

Obviously block busting, redlining, overt racism and down right ignorance played a huge role in the changing of the guard in the residential areas.

As those of us in the Chicagoland area know, it’s not the neighborhood but who lives in it that drives how it’s perceived and the services it receives.

Hey that rhymed.

In a sort of neighborhood circle of life, older neglected neighborhoods are bound to be rediscovered by those seeking beautiful, architecturally interesting buildings.

Not to mention accessibility to public transportation and green spaces.

Older neighborhoods in the city are experiencing a renaissance. Naturally, gentrification will follow.

And while many opinions will continued to be expressed about the re-emergence of urban neighborhoods, a few things continue to ring true.

People who want affordable accessible homes aren’t the problem. They shouldn’t be treated as such.

If you don’t want the flavor of your neighborhood to change, purchase it. Short of eminent domain or a federal injunction, not much can be done to take it away from you.

...

And to my fellow forum attendees that happen to be white a small aside:

You don’t need a manual on how to be a good neighbor. In fact, I think it’s somewhat ridiculous to feel guilty or apologize for simply being who you are.

Crossing 61st Street

posted by chicago pop

Keeping Vacant Lots Vacant in Woodlawn?

The University of Chicago has a longstanding promise, made to representatives of the Woodlawn neighborhood to its south, not to expand south of 61st Street. This agreement was made in 1964, 43 years ago.

At that time, there were two Germanies. China was closed to the outside world. Personal computers did not exist.

Is this pledge, and the anxieties to which it responds, out of date?

I have a feeling it might be. But there's no question that the issue is complicated.

After all, there is expansion through the urban renewal methods of razing and displacing, which did happen in Hyde Park, and didn't happen in Woodlawn; and there are other methods of expansion, through erecting buildings on vacant lots that would otherwise remain magnets for crime, and bringing jobs to a community that will help pay for rents and mortgages.

The University can without a doubt play a role in the latter strategy. It certainly requires sensitivity and open communication with neighbors on the part of the University, but it also requires and openness to change south of 61st Street, with change understood to mean that not all of the people in Woodlawn will always be poor, and that the neighborhood might one day approach the balance of household incomes it has known historically.

Take another look at the above picture of a longtime Woodlawn resident taken near her home. The University, in the end, never did expand south of 61st Street. In fact, it didn't do a thing in Woodlawn during the heyday of urban renewal, when it kept itself busy instead bulldozing solid chunks of Hyde Park.

Hyde Park, comparatively speaking, is now flourishing. Woodlawn has vacant lots the size of city blocks like the one above, not far from where Amadou Cisse was murdered.

The picture is taken from Monday's column by Chicago Tribune writer Dawn Turner Trice, who did the service of pointing out that Amadou Cisse was not the only one murdered recently nearby the University; in fact, two women have been found strangled and burned beyond recognition in garbage cans in or near Washington Park.

Trice spoke with two longtime Woodlawn natives who think the Washington Park homicides would have gotten a lot more media time if they had involved University students. They are probably right. The fact that the Cisse murder got such immediate and sustained attention from the media and from police, Trice argues, is part of why there are powerful racial and class tensions between the University and neighboring Woodlawn to the south.

That's certainly true. But things get a little less clear when the column takes a further turn, and as with so many issues in this part of town, brings it back to real estate. In particular, to the Big Bang of urban renewal, to which so many things around here can be traced back.

Like the idea that, instead of helping to get rid of those vacant lots, provide jobs, and partner with local organizations and developers to build market-rate and affordable housing, the University should be kept out. It all sounds very familiar to anyone who pays attention to Hyde Park politics, because in so many ways the terms of the debate were cast at this historical moment for both neighborhoods.

Trice quotes longtime resident Helen Latimore:

"People still see the University as harboring dreams of taking over our property." Latimore said. "Of waiting until Woodlawn is in such disrepair that all they have to do is swoop down and take it over."

It didn't help that a few years ago, the University hired a planning consultant that recommended the University expand south of 61st Street, which it has long said it wouldn't do. University officials quickly nixed the idea. But not before it reignited the suspicions and the mistrust among some Woodlawn residents.

Woodlawn residents, organized into the vibrant community and civil rights activist organization TWO, helped block University-led urban renewal plans in Woodlawn, and eventually elicited a sort of "61st Street Pledge" from the University in 1964.

But then, in the 1970s, long after most whites had left, most of the black middle class left, too. A neighborhood numbering 81,279 people in 1960, Woodlawn declined to 27,086 in 2000, a loss of 54,193. That kind of loss is not unlike that resulting from the incendiary carpet bombing of a large urban area. It constitutes the death of a neighborhood, if not a large part of a city. The number of vacant lots in Woodlawn and other similar neighborhoods attests to this massive depletion of human capital out of the neighborhood.

But without bringing human capital back in, and allowing investment from outside, things are never going to change.

So does this ban on University development south of 61st Street make any sense today, in the 21st century? Woodlawn may be able to fend for itself, with some of the indirect kind of help and support from the U of C described in a 2006 Chicago Magazine article. And, over the last decade or so, the market has finally started to notice Woodlawn; as the Chicago Reporter notes, "Between 2000 and 2004, the number of single- family attached units sold in Woodlawn tripled."

But this movement represents only a slow nudge towards what Woodlawn used to be. It's been hearly 50 years since things began to slide downhill for Woodlawn, and it may be another 50 before it returns to anything like what it was before it became pocked with vacant lots.

Considering that the University never did tear anything down south of 61st Street, maybe it's time to revisit this old treaty that keeps it behind an asphalt curtain.