March 12, 2014

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Travis vs. MitchellMARCH 12, 2014 ¬ STUDENT LED, NEIGHBORHOOD READ ¬ SINCE 2003 ¬ SOUTHSIDEWEEKLY.COM ¬ FREE

Two Democratic progressives battle over education and pension

reform in Chicago’s most important

primary

TRUAX VS. OBERWEIS, DELMARIE COBB, MECCA FLATS, VIA ROSA, JUMPING BEAN, CHIRAQ MORE INSIDE&

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ MARCH 12, 2014

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The South Side Weekly is a newsprint magazine based out of the University of Chica-go, for and about the South Side. The Weekly is distributed across the South Side each Wednesday of the academic year.

In fall 2013, the Weekly reformed itself as an independent, student-directed organization. Previously, the paper was known as the Chicago Weekly.

Editor-in-Chief Harrison SmithManaging Editor Bea Malsky

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SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

IN CHICAGOA week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times,

culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors

This Is Heat“I’ve worked with Mayor Emanuel over the years as well as Mayor Daley,” GOP gubernatorial frontrunner Bruce Rauner told the crowd assembled at last Tuesday’s GOP primary de-bate at the Logan Center, “because they control the schools in Chicago and my wife and I are dedicated school reformers.” This defensive statement about his ties to Emanuel was quickly seized by Illinois state Senator Kirk Dillard as an opportuni-ty to blast Rauner and the other candidates for their closeness to the city. “Just outside Cook County,” he quipped, “there’s a place called Illinois.” Not to be outdone, Illinois Treasurer Dan Rutherford hastily planted his own flag outside city limits. “I’ve [spent] twenty-five years as the vice president of Servicemas-ter Corporation, based in DuPage County,” he said. “I think that might be a qualifier to Senator Dillard’s idea of what a good governor should be.” Even this wasn’t good enough for Senator Bill Brady. “I think we need a downstate governor, not just a Chicago suburban governor,” he huffed. Within seconds though, his tone softened. “[Cook County] is Illinois. It makes Illinois a great state.” How generous of him. A Supposedly Fun ThingFacebook, sources tell the Weekly, is no longer what the kids are doing these days. Among the emerging social networks is Yik Yak, an app that allows users to post anonymous comments that are visible to anyone in a five- or ten mile-radius. Accord-ing to the blog on Yik Yak’s website, “Anonymity is a beautiful thing,” but Chicago school administrators disagree. The app has

become a platform for students, cloaked in anonymity, to post hurtful comments about others, heightening concerns about cy-berbullying. Schools have sent notices home asking parents to monitor their children’s social media presence and some have blocked the app from their servers. We’ll stick with the Face-book.Another PioneerFaisal Khan, the city council inspector general, has been ac-cused of breaking the law. Forty-ninth Ward Alderman Joe Moore has criticized Khan for letting his chief-of-staff, Kelly Tarrant, take a months-long leave of absence so she could work on a political campaign. The politically biased nature of the de-cision, Moore pointed out, is directly forbidden by the council’s code of ethics. It’s worth noting, however, that Moore himself was under investigation by Khan just last year. “Aldermen,” as Khan observed last December, “are complex characters.”The Pale KingSouth Side Weekly Editor-in-Chief and acclaimed cardboard stealth plane pilot Harrison Daryl Smith will step down this week. A hideous man with curious hair, Smith has been a price-less asset during his stint as Pale King of the Weekly, cutting bad stories down to oblivion and encouraging his reporters to make their interviews un-brief. Smith, whose tenure saw the Chicago Weekly’s transformation into its current form, will graduate this spring and embark on his most in-depth investi-gative report yet—reality. We’ll miss you, big guy. ¬

IN THIS ISSUETrUax vS. ObErWEIS

“There is a widening chasm in the Cook County Demo-cratic Party machine.”sarah claypoole...5

mITcHELL vS. TravIS

“There is a widening chasm in the Cook County Democratic Party ma-chine.”patrick leow & meaghan murphy................13

WaTEr bY THE SpOOnfUL

“Rather than falling in, the characters coexist with the pit.” cindy dapogny.....10

cOUrT rEfErEnDUm

“For Chubb, this incon-sistency, and its implica-tions for families affected by difficult divorce and custody battles, necessitated an action .”olivia adams........11

pUbLIcITY WOrKS

“When you lose a candidate who then becomes an arm of the mayor, you have to cut off the head.”christian belanger...4

jUmpIng bEan

“The Cafe has always attracted a diverse bohe-mia of artists, journalists, and students, as well as businessmen from the Loop and tourists looking for an ‘authentic’ Pilsen experience.”lauren gurley.....14

cHIraq

“Is our city really the war zone that its controver-sial nickname seems to suggest?”emily holland.......6

vIa rOSa

““Her extensive schooling in the ways of both the soul sample and the eggplant lasagna won her many hearts.”arman sayani.........7

Cover by Allison Torem.

WaTEr rEcLamaTIOn

“Elections to the Board are hotly contested between environmentalists, as-sorted civil servants, and well-connected insiders with no water policy expe-rience beyond the flushing of their toilets. ”osita nwanevu.......8mEcca fLaTS

“I couldn’t have done the show ten years ago, but now I was able to find the only sixteen-foot photo printer in the Midwest.”rachel schastok...10


Rage (Softly) Against the Machine

Delmarie Cobb and the gentle recklessness of political consultancy

S ipping from a bottle of Orange Car-rot Mistic in Mississippi Rick’s, a Bronzeville restaurant a couple

buildings down from her apartment, Del-marie Cobb seems to belong somewhere gentler than the coarse world of Chicago politics. Cobb is the founder of Publicity Works, a Bronzeville media and politi-cal consulting firm that’s been around for twenty-four years. The gentle impression lasts up until the moment when she relates how, since she doesn’t have any candidates this election cycle, she’s just returned from a trip to Tanzania, where she attempted to scale Mount Kilimanjaro—although she didn’t quite reach the summit. When asked why she’s not working on any po-litical campaigns this year, she explains that nobody called her up, perhaps because of a changing political landscape. Cobb wonders if she’ll have to start advertising herself to candidates again, something she hasn’t done since the early days of her com-pany.

Cobb founded Publicity Works on April Fools’ Day, 1990. Though its initial headquarters was downtown, Cobb relo-cated in 1999 to the apartment immediate-ly above her own. There are three or four permanent staff members (around elec-tion time, the number usually increases). Between campaigns, the firm also works with a number of non-profits and corpo-rations, including Genesis Housing, an organization that helps low-income fam-ilies find affordable housing, and Cedar Concepts, a manufacturing plant run by

the first female African-American CEO to work in chemical manufacturing. Cobb calls herself politically progressive, adding, “I’m very principled with how I choose my clients. They have to align with my beliefs and the community’s best interests.” She claims that, especially in Bronzeville, she can obtain “credibility for a client,” and she’s turned down both Wal-Mart—in-

stead working with an oppositional group, Good Jobs Chicago—and the City of Chi-cago, who wanted her support for the failed 2016 Olympics bid. Politically, she has run a number of successful campaigns, includ-ing for 9th Ward Aldermen Anthony Beale and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and David Orr in his initial bid for Cook County Clerk in 1990 (Pub-licity Works’s first campaign).

Cobb’s first job within the world of political consulting came in 1988, when she worked as the traveling press secretary on Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. For most of the preceding decade, she had been

a journalist, most prominently on “Street Life,” a world news program that covered events from an African-American perspec-tive. This transition—from relating a nar-rative to, in some cases, creating it—gave her a unique perspective on the campaign trail, and on the amount of bias she saw in many reporters. As she recalls: “Every time in ’88 a white reporter referred to Jackson’s

voters they were ‘followers,’ whereas Bush’s were ‘voters.’ This has demeaning implica-tions, painting black people as simply inca-pable of making their own decisions. I told Jackson to point it out to them and, once he did, they started catching themselves, and stopped doing it as much. But I was sensi-tive to those issues because I was on both sides of the camera.”

Often, Cobb’s most exciting cam-paigns have been special elections, since “with a special election, you only have nine-ty days to do a full-out campaign. They’re more short form, which I think appeals to my past as a journalist, where you had the

excitement of doing something new every day in a way that you don’t in a longer elec-tion.” Special elections, however, have also contained some of the more disappointing moments Cobb has seen. She cites the re-cent race for Jesse Jackson Jr.’s vacant seat in the House of Representatives as a partic-ular example of this. Cobb’s candidate was Anthony Beale. But fate intervened in the form of former-New York City mayor Mi-chael Bloomberg, whose Super PAC gave $2 million to help beat out Beale in favor of his challenger, Robin Kelly.

Bloomberg bet on Kelly for her gun control credentials. Cobb explained: “I was disappointed with the tenor of the cam-paign, the way in which Mayor Bloomberg decided who the candidate should be by defining the issue—gun control, which wasn’t an issue before he turned it into one. I don’t think a force outside a community should decide that community’s leadership for them.”

This cuts to the core of Cobb’s political philosophy: the importance of politicians’ remaining accountable and continuing to work for their local communities. Over the course of our conversation, she said again and again that her first move in considering a candidate is to ask herself: “Who has a history with the black community?” Con-troversially, she supported Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries for exactly this reason, explaining, “Hillary had the better urban agenda. If you looked at Barack’s speeches, he didn’t have an ur-ban agenda.” And Cobb still thinks that

Over the course of our conversation, Cobb said again and again that her first

move in considering a candidate is to ask herself, “Who has a history with the black

community?”

BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER

MARCH 12, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

Obama has been “very disappointing” since taking office. Of course, her decision to support Clinton created rifts between her and members of Chicago’s African-Amer-ican community—one Obama supporter called her an “Uncle Tom.” But Cobb’s ire toward the President extends to his mayor. “In 2011,” she says, “Rahm Emanuel won Fifty-nine percent of the black vote—now black people rue the day they ever saw Rahm. But way back, this man was a con-gressman on the North Side, and he didn’t talk about the issues that mattered to these voters then, so why should he do it now?”

Cobb’s frustration with Emanuel may stem from a larger problem she experi-ences: working primarily in aldermanic elections on the South Side doesn’t ac-tually effect a whole lot of change, even when her candidates win. Often, aldermen go straight to city council and, in Cobb’s words, “are happy just to be ‘in the room.’ ” Her opinion is corroborated by a study released last April by the University of Il-linois at Chicago that showed the mayor receiving well over ninety percent support from aldermen on divided roll call votes. Once an alderman reaches city council, the previous rhetoric of change tends to evapo-rate—or it remains, but is rarely supported by acts of legislative rebellion or dissent. Cobb’s solution is simple: “When you lose a candidate who then becomes an arm of the mayor, you need to cut off the head.” She believes that if Emanuel is forced to run on his record for his next campaign, he’ll have a good deal more trouble regain-ing the mayorship than he had in obtaining it. Cobb thinks of Toni Preckwinkle as a particular threat to Emanuel, saying that Preckwinkle could turn out to be “Rahm’s biggest nightmare” if she decides to run in 2015.

Though Cobb mentions her ability to remain friendly with people both inside and outside of the political arena, she has also become estranged from some former friends in the past couple of years. In 2010, she worked for Roland Burris, the former Illinois senator appointed by Rod Blagoje-

vich, in an attempt to clear his name and help him regain popularity. In the pro-cess, she called out several former clients, writing, in a letter to an alderman, “In true David Axelrod style, all week, white progressive Democratic elected officials have called for Roland’s resignation—Da-vid Orr, Dan Hynes, Dick Durbin, Pat Quinn, and Alexi Giannoulias.” In person, she is just as harsh. “I fell out with David Orr and Quinn in 2011 because I thought the way they treated Burris was despicable. All this time Daley had done things that were super-scandalous, but they never said anything to him, and I thought they were being hypocrites.” Through his commu-nications director, Courtney Greve, Orr responded that he “has always respected Delmarie Cobb and calling for Burris’ res-ignation was in no way a reflection on her or her work.” In her profession, one that is more often conciliatory than incendiary, Cobb’s repudiation of Democratic allies in the name of integrity, despite its idealism, nevertheless comes off as a little reckless.

And yet if there is a recklessness to Cobb, it is hidden beneath layers of warm mannerisms and a thorough professional-ism. Fifth Ward Alderman Leslie Hair-ston and 3rd Ward Alderman Pat Dowell both vouched for her expertise, with Hair-ston adding, “She knows people from the highest of the highs to the lowest of the lows. She has her finger on the pulse and knows the history of the city.” When asked if her work with Burris may have kept pol-iticians away from her this year, she cau-tiously ventures, “I may be seeing a little bit of it this election cycle,” but declines to go much further. As Cobb gets up to leave Mississippi Rick’s, she mentions the need for a smarter electorate and more young activists—political cliches since Socrates first chided the “bad manners” of Athenian youth—but she manages to make them convincing. Even if Cobb, as she spec-ulated earlier, may need to get out there and re-sell herself, she still seems awfully well-prepared. ¬

PRIMARIES

Oberweis vs.TruaxJim Oberweis and Doug Truax are facing off in the Illinois GOP Primary for Democrat Dick

Durbin’s U.S. Senate seat. Durbin, presently the Majority Whip for the Senate, faces criticism from Republican seat-seekers, who have argued he is a career politician. He has held the seat for seventeen years, with fourteen years spent in the U.S. House of Representatives prior to that. Both Truax and

Oberweis identify as mainstream Republicans, but their positions don’t line up everywhere.

About the Candidates

Though endorsed by the Chicago Tribune and Newt Gingrich, Truax is at fifteen percent support from likely GOP voters to Oberweis’s fifty-two percent, according to a Tribune poll. The forty-three-year-old West Point grad is a businessman and the co-owner of Veritas Risk Services, a strate-gic risk consulting firm.

Doug TruaxJim Oberweis

Oberweis has been campaigning in Illinois politics on and off for about a decade,

contesting positions ranging from the same U.S. Senate seat to Illinois governor. A

former math and science teacher, he rep-resents the 25th District as a state senator,

is the chairman of his family’s business, Oberweis Dairy, and lent his own cam-

paign $500,000 of personal funding.

ImmigrationTruax supports a legal path to citizenship and sees issues of immigration as intimate-ly tied to homeland security. He cites the state in which he was born—New Mexi-co—as a reason for his focus on pragmatic immigration reform. He believes President Obama cannot successfully implement the necessary changes.

In 2004, Oberweis was called out for a series of political ads that were widely

considered anti-immigration and racist. Speaking to the Chicago Tribune this

election cycle, he indicated support for comprehensive immigration reform—with-

out a special path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Government SpendingTruax disagreee with last year’s biparti-san budget compromise. He argues that Washington leaders should have kept with their principles instead of agreeing with a political maneuver for the purpose of get-ting along. He thinks Obamacare is bad for the average American and detrimental to scientific advances. The tax code, he argues, is needlessly complex and that taxes should be limited to core government functions.

Oberweis argues the budget compromise was necessary to move forward political discourse, faulting Truax’s adherence to principle over policy as impractical. The

government, he says, is overspending, which is harmful for the American people.

A discussion of healthcare should also include the revising of medical malprac-

tice policy, and a single-payer system is inadvisable.

Gun ControlTruax publically criticized the Stand Your Ground hearings Dick Durbin supported in Washington, arguing that they do not address the Chicago-specific contributors to gun violence. ¬

Oberweis has an eighty-three percent approval rating from the NRA, which

indicates an overall pro-gun stance.

BY SARAH CLAYPOOLEillustrations by ellie mejia


Chief Keef has become a near-myth-ical figure. As a result of the nine-teen-year-old Englewood rapper’s

notorious exploits, both on and off the re-cord, he has attracted significant interest from many national news outlets, blogs, and tastemaker publications. Perhaps no publication has done more to advance the cult of Keef than Vice magazine, twhich is known for its voyeuristic, “immersionist” style of reporting.

Now, Vice’s music outlet, Noisey, is filming and releasing an eight-part video series called “Chiraq,” highlighting Keef and his up-and-coming genre, drill. (The series’ last episode airs Wednesday, March 12.) The appeal of the series is predicat-ed on the viewer’s being an outsider to Keef ’s world—and the show’shost reporter, Thomas Morton, certainly is. The question “Chiraq” is founded on, that it asks both explicitly and implicitly, is whether drill represents “the real Chicago;” is wheth-er our city is really the war zone that its controversial nickname suggests. During almost every episode in the series, one of the Chicago artists interviewed is asked about how his music corresponds to his real experience. Young Chop: “It’s too serious.” Yung Trell: “That’s how it really is.” But while “Chiraq” does document allegedly dangerous parts of life on the South Side, it does not deliberate about the things it portrays, at least not in the way that South Side insiders have begun to do as they wit-ness the effects of drill music on their com-munities.

From the very introduction to the se-ries it becomes clear that Noisey is jumping on Chicago’s reputation as murder cap-ital of America (over 500 reported homi-cides in 2012). Also noting that Chicago is America’s most segregated city, Morton hazards that Chicago is the “perfect breed-ing ground for anger, resentment, and vio-lence, and the type of awesome music that comes from such an environment.” This statement serves to summarize “Chiraq’s” dubious attitude toward the South Side.

Going forward, Morton brings the viewer on a lurid tourist journey through Engle-wood and a few of the other neighborhoods that drill artists call home.

Though billed as the ostensible subject of the series, Chief Keef really functions as more of a phantom figure looming over the documentary. The day that the Noisey team arrived in Chicago, Keef was sent to juve-nile detention for violating parole. Morton never speaks directly with him. Most of the episodes, therefore, focus on getting close to Keef and his lifestyle through in-terviews with his friends and associates.

The focus of these interviews is, once again, authenticity. Consumers of Keef ’s music who don’t share his background have never been quite sure whether to be-lieve the gunslinging swagger he’s built up around himself, although a fatal beef with fellow rapper Lil Jojo allows many of his

friends to tell you that it’s based in reali-ty. His manager, Peeda Pan, is shown on “Chiraq” saying that “the reason why [drill music] has become so big is that it came at a time when the music game needed something organic,” and that the videos Keef posted had “nothing fabricated” about them, which perhaps makes them strange-ly compelling to “people who have nothing to do with that kind of lifestyle at all.” Jo Jo Capone of Chicago rap collective Glob-al Gangsters pulls up the back of his shirt to reveal an entire constellation of names of those who died from violent crimes in Chicago; the largest name, at the bottom, is the name of his fifteen-year-old son.

In trying to convince the viewer of the deeply personal reality of Chicago gun vi-olence, “Chiraq’s” creators operate on the delicate assumption that drill music is as “awesome” as they think it is, without con-

sidering the many ways in which the genre might cast a shadow over the South Side. Viewers of the show see that drill is valued in its home communities, its concentration of “blocks,” both because of its relevance and because of the validating fact that, largely because of Chief Keef, it has been recognized outside of those communities. However, to some insiders, the way drill music functions both in neighborhoods like Englewood and in the wider world has seemed far from positive.

At a film screening at the Chicago Urban League in Bronzeville, an-other film entitled “Chi Raq” was

recently publicized; this one was the work of filmmaker Will Robson-Scott. It zeroes in on Chicago violence without the medi-ating lenses of music or rap stardom. It’s gritty, shot in black and white, with gun-

BY EMILY HOLLAND

A TV series and film seek to portray South Side violence

A Tale of Two Chiraqs


MUSIC

Poetry in the

MixZ&H chef and musician

Via Rosa drops an eclectic mixtape

BY ARMAN SAYANI

When she isn’t kicking it with the boys from the Save Mon-ey crew or championing some

obscure cause in the name of veganism, Uvela “Via” Rosa likes to spin a tune or two. “Both my parents have been musi-cians for as long as I can remember,” she says. “They were in several reggae bands and I spent most of my time on the road with them till about 2003.” Since then, her personal music taste has extended beyond her reggae roots, encompassing everything from Sade and Nirvana to Brazilian and African dance music, with an un-ironic ap-preciation of *N Sync thrown in for good measure.

Born in Austin, Texas, and brought up on an Indian reservation camp in North-ern California, Rosa wound up attending culinary school in Hollywood before mov-ing to Chicago in 2010. “I originally came here,” she says, “‘cause my job in Holly-wood decided to stop paying.”

“Also, my grandma was getting really sick, so I came over to be her personal chef and keep her company.”

Rosa’s move to Chicago coincided perfectly with the beginnings of the new “chipmunk soul” movement, spearheaded largely by the visionary Chicago produc-tion collective THEMpeople. Rosa, an early convert to the cause, linked up with the collective through Myspace, assuming the dual role of in-house chef and artist-in-the-making. Her extensive schooling in the ways of both the soul sample and the eggplant lasagna won her many hearts, particularly those of Joey Purp, Kami De Chukwu, and Nico Segal—all members

of Save Money with THEMpeople ties—who rewarded her with features on their own singles. Rosa is very candid about the collective’s influence on her own style, describing her music as “a fusion of my-self and the guys—a little hip-hop, a little jazz, a little soul, a little trap and blues, all mixed in with some poetry.”

This inclination to bend and meld son-ic landscapes becomes apparent mere mo-ments into “Magician,” the first single off Rosa’s forthcoming solo project, “Death-ViaLove.” A dejected lover’s recollection of a failed relationship, the song showcases the delightful interplay between Via Rosa’s smokey soul sensibilities and local hip-hop prodigy Jean Deaux’s breathy, slow-as-mo-lasses delivery, all over a dark and luxuriant THEMpeople beat. It’s the kind of thing Bill Withers would have put out if he had had an ear for Gypsy funk and ready access to Ableton Live.

According to Via Rosa, “DeathVia-Love” is “an album about the many ways one could ‘die’ by way of love, whether it be self-inflicted or by the evil in the world.” If the video for “Magician”—a mess of tattoos, chiffon, and vintage furniture, all bathed in a haze of cigarette smoke—is anything to work off, one definitely gets the sense that the rest of the project will live up to its promise of being simultane-ously depressing and delighting.

The album doesn’t drop until March 23, but you can probably head over to the Z&H deli on 57th Street, where Rosa pre-pares the soups (she does a mean Cheddar & Broccoli), for an advance listen. ¬

courtesy of the artist

shot-wound scars and elementary school pictures of slain sons and daughters bared in front of the camera. The mentions of drill music in the film (“Yes, the music has got to do a little bit with the violence,” says one man in the film) naturally led to drill becoming subject of the conversation that took place at the screening.

High schoolers who spoke out said of Chief Keef that “everybody wants to be like him,” and that, lacking other outlets to better or make a name for oneself, many of Chicago’s young men are turning to displays of “superiority through violence.” The screening’s panel, led by Sun-Times writer Maudlyne Ihejirika and consisting of Diane Latiker, CEO of Kids Off The Block; Alfonza Wysinger, First Depu-ty Superintendent, and the Reverend Dr. Marshall Hatch, discussed drill in a sim-ilar way. Hatch especially spoke about the increasingly prominent position of drill music in Chicago youth’s “tragedy of lim-ited vision.” Like many of the artists who were interviewed for the Noisey series, he conceded that music was an outlet that can “raise you up,” and that on occasion con-vinces kids to pursue something productive and inspirational. But he was concerned with what he termed the “degeneration” of hip-hop, with a move away from music that interrogates and challenges difficult circumstances to music that glorifies and celebrates the vicious cycle of gang life. He pointed to Tupac and to other 1990s hip-hop artists as examples, challenging

those gathered at the screening to stop and think for a moment: how does (or perhaps, how can) drill music stack up against these earlier hip-hop giants? And aside from the easily-levied criticism of the type of role models drill music provides on the South Side, the panel also brought up the equal-ly troubling matter of drill being the area’s primary cultural export during the millen-nial generation.

As Thomas Morton says to the Global Gangsters at one point, “I’m here to kind of try to learn as much as I can about what’s going on in Chicago, especially through the music, because that’s all the way I hear about it.” Hatch laments the ways in which the South Side’s gang-banging image, as propagated through the music of Keef, Lil Durk, Lil Reese, and artists like them, “keeps people from investing” in an area that, as Latiker said, needs all the atten-tion and support it can get. She said that, for most of the teens she works with, “ just caring” abiut them has brought them such a long way. When outsiders dismiss Chi-cago as “Chiraq,” it drives away those who might seek to invest in community-build-ing projects, understand the people of the South Side, and catalyze positive change, locking residents within an image of their neighborhoods that is very like the “cage” from which Peeda Pan says Keef was just trying to break free. Drill music, it seems, may widen rather than bridge this gap. The most insidious message it sends, according to Hatch, is that “this is all we can be.” ¬

In trying to convince the viewer of the deeply personal reality of Chicago gun

violence, “Chiraq’s” creators operate on the delicate assumption that drill music

is as “awesome” as they think it is.


PRIMARIES

On primary day, sixteen candidates will take part in a down-ballot scrum for the chance to contest

positions in an administrative body few people have even heard of. The Democrat-ic, Republican, and Green parties will each choose three candidates to run in Novem-ber for the three open spots on the Board of Commissioners of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago—the body responsible for water reclamation and flood control across nearly 900 square miles of Cook County, an area containing over five million people.

It was the Reclamation District, then called the Sanitary District of Chicago at the time, that reversed the flow of the Chi-cago River in 1900 to divert wastewater from Lake Michigan, which the District still does today. It was the District that lo-cal environmentalists first looked toward in 2002 to curb the ongoing spread of in-vasive Asian carp in the lake and connected area waters. And it was the District that local environmentalists began condemning in 2008 for its long-held policy, reversed in 2011, of dumping filtered but untreated wastewater into the Chicago River.

The Board of Commissioners controls the District and its $1 billion dollar annual budget. Consequently, they control much of Greater Chicago’s water policy and have responsibilities as significant as the city they serve.

Candidate Frank Gardner, one of ten Democrats running for the Board, seems to understand the Board’s importance, but he still manages, somehow, to find room for exaggeration.

“Together with respect for the envi-ronment—with unbridled integrity—we can bring forth unparalleled prosperity to this city and the environment—and Cook County in general,” he says in a brief You-Tube campaign video.

Among the other Democratic candi-dates vying to bring “unparalleled pros-perity” to the city via sewage treatment is Kathleen Mary O’Reilley—a current

employee at the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, a previous candidate for the board, and, according to Gardner’s Facebook page, his running mate.

O’Reilley is also Frank Gardner’s mother.

In late February, Fox 32’s Dane Placko reported that both Gardner and O’Reilley share the same River Forest home and had filed their candidacy documents at the exact same time in November. Placko also found that the full name on O’Reil-ley’s driver’s license is Kathleen O’Reilley Gardner. O’Reilley is evidently a maiden name—one dropped upon marriage to Frank Gardner’s father (also named Frank Gardner), a former commissioner on the Reclamation District’s Board.

“Look…I’m happy to speak about my candidacy,” the younger Gardner told Placko upon being confronted by Fox 32’s news crew at his home. Shortly thereafter, he shut the door in Placko’s face. To date, Gardner and O’Reilley have yet to public-ly acknowledge their familial relationship. Neither could be reached for comment.

The Gardner-O’Reilley situation would have been unlikely in the mundane Board elections of not so long ago. For many years, the Board’s elections were large-ly uncompetitive and unwatched, with positions occupied by, as former Chica-go Reader reporter Chris Hayes wrote in a 2005 story on the subject, “Democratic organization veterans and longtime dis-trict employees.” That changed with the independent candidacy of environmental-ist Debra Shore, who managed to garner both tens of thousands of dollars in dona-tions and a victory through unprecedent-edly vigorous campaigning and a conser-vation-based platform. As Reader reporter Mick Dumke wrote in 2010, the Board has gained “attention, notoriety, and impor-tance” in the eyes of Chicago politicos ever since then. Elections to the Board are now hotly contested between environmental-ists, assorted civil servants, businesspeople, and well-connected insiders with no water

policy experience beyond the flushing of their toilets.

2012 saw the election of one such insider candidate, attorney and lobbyist Patrick Daley Thompson, to the Board. Thompson, the first of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s grandchildren to make a bid for public office, received over $160,000 in do-nations in that year’s primary, according to the Reader. Much came from high-profile Democratic party politicians and donors, including Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and billionaire J.B. Pritzker.

Though Thompson’s answers to a candidate questionnaire distributed by the Chicago Tribune that year referenced nominally-related experience working with storm water issues as a real estate attorney, the extent of his qualifications differed noticeably from those of other Democratic candidates. Kari Steele, for example, ran, also successfully, on her thirteen years of experience as a water chemist and Reclamation District lab technician and water sampler.

Beyond Gardner and O’Reilley, this year’s slate of non-incumbent candidates is particularly stacked with newcomers to

water policy. Running alongside incum-bent Commissioner Cynthia Santos on the Democratic “Leaders for Water Reclama-tion” ticket are Tom Courtney, an attor-ney and former candidate for 27th Ward Alderman and Adam Miguest, a twenty-three-year-old fundraising consultant and former candidate for 4th Ward alderman. Also running on the Democratic side are Brendan Houlihan, a former Cook County Board of Review commissioner, commu-nity organizer and urban planner Josina Morita, Rich Township administrator Tim Bradford, and attorney John S. Xydakis.

The three Republican candidates vy-ing for a spot on the Board include man-agement consultant and former Dem-ocratic candidate for Illinois’ 5th U.S. Congressional district R. Cary Capparelli, Cook County Board of Review tax analyst and former Cook County Commissioner Herb Schumann, and 19th Ward Repub-lican committeeman Jim Parrilli.

The Green Party slate notably includes the only non-incumbent environmentalist in the race, urban gardener and sustain-ability advocate Karen Roothaan, who is running alongside retired Chicago Public School teacher and trained policy analyst

BY OSITA NWANEVU

Slippery politics at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District

Something in the Water

wei yi ow

Jim Parilli (R) and Josina Morita (D) are running for the water reclamation district’s board.


George Milkowski and former Chicago Public Housing Police Officer Michael Smith.

Despite their differences in back-ground, the stances taken by the Board candidates on some of the most signifi-cant issues facing the District are fairly similar. Candidate questionnaires distrib-uted by the Daily Herald indicate broad support for greater District collaboration with local bodies on flood and storm water management in light of the floods that hit the city’s northern suburbs last spring, the development of largely unspecified “green infrastructure,” and the finishing of the Deep Tunnel Project, a highly ambitious, multi-billion-dollar anti-flooding and sewage treatment scheme already thir-ty-nine years in the making. Deep Tunnel is not slated for completion until 2029.

Although rainwater and runoff ar-en’t likely to drive voters to the polls with the same fervor inspired by char-ter schools or city crime, the perks of a spot on the Board rival those offered by the more high-profile, up-ballot offic-es responsible for tackling those issues. Beyond winning a potential springboard into higher-level city politics, Commis-sioners earn $70,000 a year for part-time work and are each supplied with a District car. Commissioner pay, though, is notably less than compensation for many of the District’s full-time employees. Accord-ing to the District’s 2013 budget, prin-ciple mechanical engineers can make up to $133,829 a year while the body’s top administrators can make up to $217,850 a year—more than Mayor Rahm Eman-uel’s 2013 salary of $204,726 and in the ballpark of police Superintendent Garry McCarthy’s $260,000. In 2010, similarly high compensation levels were scrutinized in a Chicago News Cooperative and Bet-ter Government Association investigation whose findings were published in the New York Times. The two groups discovered that the number of Reclamation District employees earning six-figures tripled be-tween 2005 and 2010—and that sixteen District employees earned 2010 salaries higher than that of then-Mayor Richard Daley.

By the laws governing the District, the Board of Commissioners is respon-sible for appointing the body’s top and highest-paid administrator, the Executive Director, as well as the also highly-paid

Treasurer. Additionally, the executive di-rector appoints the rest of the District’s top administrators with the advice and consent of the Board. Both powers give Commissioners significant influence and authority over some of the most high-ly paid public sector jobs in the city and state. Interestingly and perhaps unsurpris-ingly, the 2005 to 2010 period that saw an expansion in six figure compensation was also the period during which elections to the Board of Commissioners became more conspicuously competitive by media accounts.

Commissioners also enjoy full dis-cretion in the hiring of personal aides. The 2010 investigation singled out two still-serving commissioners—Barbara McGowan and Frank Avila—for hiring their children, with McGowan’s daugh-ter Donna then earning an annual salary of $88,000, a full $18,000 more than her mother’s current salary. Avila, who is cur-rently running for reelection in the Dem-ocratic primary, also employed Dominic Longo, a man convicted of vote fraud in 1984 and described in the Times as a “vet-eran Chicago Democratic political opera-tive,” for nearly $84,000 a year.

In light of this recent history, Gard-ner and O’Reilley’s joint candidacy for the Board seems almost appropriate—as does the question of whether the taint of Chi-cago politics has really managed to pollute even this highly obscure and highly im-portant body.

Answer: Is water wet?¬

wei yi ow


The Abyss Stares Also

T here’s a hole in the stage. It’s ragged and stony and the first row of the audience is staring uncomfortably

into its belly, as it opens black before them. Above, shrouds hang, translucent and grey. The scene brings to mind “Macbeth’s” cold Scottish castle more than a North Phil-adelphia living room, and yet Philly is where Quiara Alegría Hudes’s “Water by the Spoonful,” playing now at Court The-atre, begins. Even when the play takes us to Swarthmore, to Japan, to Puerto Rico, the hole remains, demanding our attention. It’s a locus of addiction, of failure, of despair, ever visible. But rather than falling in, the characters in “Water” coexist with the pit. They try to understand it, edge around it, and most importantly, they hold one an-other back from its depths.

Hudes’s “Water by the Spoonful,” winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Dra-ma, is the second in a trilogy of plays. “The Elliot Cycle” focuses on the eponymous Elliot Ortiz (Edgar Miguel Sanchez), a Puerto Rican veteran of the Iraq War liv-ing in North Philadelphia with his ailing mother. Directed at Court by of Henry Godinez, “Water” brings in Elliot’s es-tranged birth mother, Odessa (Charin Al-varez), a moderator of an online chatroom for recovering crack addicts, and his cousin Yazmin (Yadira Correa), an adjunct music professor.

Each play in the “The Elliot Cycle” has a different musical motif: the first has Bach at its core, the third Puerto Rican folk mu-sic. “Water” uses free jazz, mainly through Yazmin’s teaching and John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” (thought to be Coltrane’s answer to his own struggles with alcohol-ism and addiction). Yazmin (shortened to “Yaz”) tells her students, “Coltrane de-mocratized the notes. He said they’re all equal.” The meaning of jazz rests on the spaces between the notes, rather than the notes alone. Yaz makes the point that dis-

sonance can quickly dissolve into noise, but when it’s balanced, there’s a beauty in the seeming chaos.

This logic of dissonance is, oddly enough, what holds the show together. Odessa’s chatroom addresses this point most clearly: the members are misfits, brought together by their addictions and the safety of Internet anonymity. Orang-utan is an adopted Japanese-American woman who moves to Japan to find her birth parents. Chutes&Ladders is a prissy

IRS agent. A newcomer, Fountainhead, is a former CEO with a yellow Porsche and a great deal of denial. They argue bitterly but honestly, revealing the more fragile parts of themselves, the parts that need others’ help. Each struggles with their competing desires: their near-irresistible addictions and their desperation to stay sober.

Odessa ends up as the most compel-ling character. Her good moments are a product of her bad ones, and vice versa. She is at war with herself, but she holds each side in check as best she can until the balance, about two-thirds through the play, is thrown off to disastrous effect. Charin Alvarez is wonderfully understated in the role, a portrait of both resignation and resilience. Odessa is haggard, visibly tired from fighting for years against a de-

sire that doesn’t simply ebb with time, and Alvarez conveys the full extent of Odessa’s guilt, of her anger at herself and her frus-tration with her family, as well as Odessa’s competing selves. In one moment, as she discusses Zen Buddhism with Fountain-head, her phone rings and she delivers terse, expletive-laden directions to her son. Alvarez manages this self-contradiction with astounding ease, her jaw and shoul-ders slackening as she returns to a shocked Fountainhead. “My family knows every

button to push,” she sighs.But to make notes clash effectively,

you have to consider why they’re clashing, and what they’re clashing with. This is lost at points: Yaz’s self-reflection is superficial and Elliot’s relationship to addiction only weakly followed up. Elliot’s wider experi-ences feel unexplored as well. He is dealing with the cancer of his surrogate mother and fallout from his tour in Iraq; the injury he got there gives him a pronounced limp, but his emotions, though often extreme, are at times unconvincing. Moving from one emotional pole to the other, something of Elliot is lost in transition. His emotions serve more as devices to move the plot than as true reflections of character, and this de-tracts from the richness of dissonance evi-denced elsewhere in the play.

In spite of this, Elliot’s relationship with Yaz is easily the strongest in “Wa-ter,” or rather the one in the least danger of crumbling. Sanchez and Correa’s rep-artee is honest and warm, their arguments punctuated with good-natured humor and comforting familiarity. Unlike any other relationship in the play, theirs is never in question. They are cousins, they grew up together, and there is no threat of aban-donment between them. Elsewhere, rela-tionships are trickier. Orangutan vanishes for three months, setting the rest of the chatroom group on edge. Fountainhead refuses to tell his wife about his addiction. Elliot has not forgiven Odessa for her ne-glect. But they aren’t so tricky that, even as the pit gapes before them, the characters find themselves alone in their community, or among their keepers and their friends.

Although “Water by the Spoonful” sometimes shades into melodrama, its true and beating heart is enough to keep it go-ing. At its simplest, the play is a portrayal of the unrelenting struggle against the pull of the hole in the center of the stage. It tells us that we can lose everything if we stray into the pit, but also that others are waiting at the edge to pull us back out. Each char-acter’s decisions bring them to its edge, and Hudes shows us that sometimes we must turn outward for help, to those who care for us, in order to take care of ourselves. Dissonant notes can fade away, but people, from crack addicts to war veterans, have to find some way to survive with the contra-dictions they’ve become. ¬

Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through April 6. See site for showtimes. (773)753-

4472. courttheatre.org

At its simplest, the play is a portrayal of the unrelenting struggle against the pull of the

hole in the center of the stage. It tells us that we can lose everything if we stray into the pit, but also that others are waiting at the

edge to pull us back out.

“Water by the Spoonful” at Court TheatreBY CINDY DAPOGNY

THEATER


It’s Saturday morning at Cafe Jump-ing Bean, on 18th Street in Pilsen. A middle-aged man in a wool sweater

reads from a book called “La Posibilidad de Cambio,” (“The Possibility of Change”) - as he slurps down a bowl of bean soup. Two college-aged girls catch up over focac-cia sandwiches and lattes. A crime and ho-micide photographer from a major Chicago newspaper checks for news updates on his iPhone. Luis Montenegro-Ferrel, a painter who has been a Cafe Jumping Bean regular since it opened twenty years ago, is look-ing for an empty seat. Although it’s a mere twelve degrees outside and the streets of Pilsen are painted white with snow, all ten tables in the modestly-sized lime green and Caribbean blue room are occupied.

When long-time Pilsen resident Elea-zar Delgado decided to open Cafe Jumping Bean in the location of an old barber shop, he hoped to provide the neighborhood with one thing it was lacking: good coffee. “There was a need for it in this community,” says Delgado, who was twenty-six when he opened the cafe. “There was nothing south of Division Street back when I opened this place. Nothing in this neighborhood that was rich in the arts.”

Instead of serving sopes, tacos, and tamales, like many of his neighbors, Del-gado made mochas and chais, sandwiches

and salads with optional sides of jalapeno, avocado, and salsa. Delgado was inspired by the coffee shops that he visited on a trip to Monterrey, Mexico. “In Mexico, they’ve got a very community feel. It’s a very re-laxed atmosphere. They’re cozy, they’re small, and they have simple menus.”

“In the nineties there was really no other such place for artists to meet outside schools,” says Montenegro-Ferrel, a tall thin man with high cheekbones and a soft, melodic voice, who works out of an art stu-dio in the neighborhood. “When Eleazar opened the restaurant, all of the artists felt that we needed to support it, a new place where we could meet. Business picked up immediately.”

Montenegro-Ferrel arrived from Du-rango to Pilsen with his parents, food-in-dustry workers, in 1975, and he’s been a Cafe Jumping Bean regular for nearly twenty years. At the time of the opening, Montenegro-Ferrel, then an art student at Columbia College, would play Spanish guitar in the evening to help Delgado bring in new customers. “Eleazar said, ‘Luis, why don’t you come in here?’ In order to pay for my books, I would play here or in the subways. I did it for a couple of winters and one or two summers. But eventually, I think they got tired of my repertoire.”

Since 2000, Pilsen has lost over a

quarter of its Latino residents. According to Montenegro-Ferrel, the Cafe has always attracted a diverse group of artists, journal-ists, and students, as well as businessmen from the Loop and tourists looking for an “authentic” Pilsen experience.

Delgado says that demographic shifts in the neighborhood have changed the cafe’s clientele. “It’s no longer a primarily Latino neighborhood. It’s mixed. The busi-nesses on the strip are also very diverse. It’s nice. It brings in different people. The neighborhood is more touristy than before because we have the largest Latino muse-um in the country...and we’ve seen UIC double in size.”

In recent years, Delgado has turned off the Internet on weekdays between 11:30 and 2:30, and all day on weekends. “We are a small cafe. We seat a total of thirty peo-ple. Back in 2007, when the crazy Wi-Fi thing started, it was a really big change for the cafe,” says Delgado. “Before everyone came in and talked, played a game of chess, read a book. But my lunchtime people were coming in, and couldn’t find a place to sit. That year I happened to go on a trip to Se-attle, where I discovered the ‘Wi-Fi sched-ule.’ People thought I was nuts. They said, ‘You know, listen, you’re going to kill your business.’ We gave it a shot and it actually increased my business.”

“It’s not that he’s trying to be mean,” says Abel Uribe, a friend of Delgado and Montenegro-Ferrel. “There’s just such a high volume of people here. You see, we’ve been here almost an hour and it’s been packed the entire time.” Short, with a po-nytail and beret, Uribe is a local photojour-nalist from Jalisco, Mexico. For the past ten years he has used Cafe Jumping Bean as a base for the crime reporting he con-ducts around the city. “Cafe Jumping Bean is just a friendly place for anybody who’s after a good cup of coffee,” Uribe says.

“I go once a week,” says Yana Kunich-off, another journalist, who writes for the Chicago Reporter. “You can see all the dif-ferent shades of Pilsen here. I think Jump-ing Bean is on the border of what people call East and West Pilsen. It’s this space that has managed not to completely become bars and restaurants.”“To me it’s just this humble business run by a humble owner,” says Montenegro-Ferrel. “You look at the history of coffee shops, even coffee shops in Europe, they are always a place where a lot of great energy came from, and certainly the people, not just one person, have shaped that.” ¬

FOOD

BY LAUREN GURLEY

Cafe Jumping Bean celebrates twenty years in Pilsen

The Jumping

Bean

stephanie koch


After the Republican gubernato-rial primary, the most expensive political race in Illinois is the

Democratic primary for the state’s 26th District, a skinny strip of land that runs along the lakefront from Streeterville to South Chicago. The incumbent, Represen-tative Christian Mitchell, is a mainstream Democrat interested in same-sex marriage equality, education reform, and gun con-trol. The same could be said of his chal-lenger, Jhatyn “Jay” Travis, an activist who has served as the executive director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organiza-tion (KOCO) for twelve years.

The two candidates, Mitchell told the Sun-Times, agree on “ninety-five percent” of the issues. The two have similar back-grounds. They are young, politically speak-ing—he’s twenty-seven, she’s forty-one—and alumni of the University of Chicago. They both reflect on how growing up in rough environments shaped their interest in politics: Mitchell recalls a false murder accusation and harsh sentence against his aunt; Travis remembers her grandmother’s fight against racist housing policies in Bronzeville.

In spite of these similarities, the can-didates have collectively raised an astound-ing $543,298 since October, when Travis began to raise money and collect signatures in a bid to unseat Mitchell. (A one-term incumbent, Mitchell was elected follow-ing a narrow 501-vote victory in the 2012 primaries.) In the lead-up to this cycle’s March 18 primary, the debate has centered on two key issues. The first is Senate Bill 1, a massive effort to overhaul the state’s pension system that was signed into law in December. The second is the prospect of an elected school board for Chicago Public Schools.

The race can also be contextualized

within a splintering of the wider Cook County Democratic Party. Major Dem-ocratic leaders like Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Mike Madigan, Speaker of the Illinois House, find themselves at odds with a group led primarily by the Chicago Teachers Union. The CTU is dissatisfied with the political status quo, coming off a tumultuous cou-ple of years that has seen a citywide public teachers’ strike and a record wave of school closings. They question if this leadership, with its support of elect-ed officials like C h r i s t i a n Mitchell, is too e n a m -ored with big money to ad-equately represent the interests of working families in Chicago.

“We see the people who are bankroll-ing Christian Mitchell as a threat to our economic stability as well as our public education,” says Brandon Johnson, depu-ty political director for the CTU. “[They] have a different mission and vision. That’s why you’re seeing so much attention on this race.”

A graduate of Kenwood Acade-my, Columbia College, and the UofC’s School of Social Service

Administration, Travis describes herself as having “dedicated my professional life to organizing and public policy advocacy.” In the past two years, Travis and KOCO, which advocates for education reform in Kenwood and Oakland, have focused on rallying community support against school closures and charter-oriented policies.

These policies are imposed by a school board whose seven members are se-

lected by the mayor, without general elections or city

council approval. Accord-ingly, Travis has made school

board reform one of her campaign’s leading issues. “What we’ve found,” she says, “is that when you have an appointed school board that’s appointed by the mayor, they tend to vote his agenda accordingly.”

As she sees it, an elected school board would function as a preventative measure against sweeping actions like the 2013 school closures, which were backed by Mayor Emanuel and a 6-0 board vote. “If we were going to have a process in which

people could actually impact decisions, we would need an elected, representative school board.”

House Bill 2793, a bill sponsored by South Side representative Elgie Sims, of the 34th District, would put board mem-bership up for election. Christian Mitchell is currently one of three co-sponsors for the bill, but only added his sponsorship on October 10 of last year, six months af-ter the bill was first filed and then sent to the House Rules Committee. Given that the Rules Committee is widely considered a place where bills “go to die,” Travis ac-knowledges that it would take considerable energy to move the bill forward if she were

elected. Still, it remains a top concern for her campaign.

For Travis, Mitchell’s delay in spon-soring the bill raises a red flag. “The timing of his decision to sign on as a sponsor hap-pened to be the same time that I circulated petitions for candidacy. I think that timing is not coincidental,” she says.

Mitchell rejects the notion that he has been insufficiently supportive of a more accountable school board. Speaking to the South Side Weekly, he was unequivocal in his commitment to accountability. “What

PRIMARIES

Mitchell vs. TravisThe race for the 26th District is Chicago’s most important primary

BY PATRICK LEOW AND MEAGHAN MURPHY

“If we were going to have a process in which people could actually impact decisions, we would need an elected, representative school board.”

Jay Travis

allison torem


I’ve consistently said is that making sure people have a voice in education is import-ant.”

He also believes Travis’s single-mind-ed focus on an elected school board is my-opic, and in a recent interview with the Hyde Park Herald he warned against see-

ing an elected school board as a “panacea” for problems in public education.

Mitchell’s education platform moves beyond a call for the passage of HB 2793, which he views as part of a broader push for an overhaul in the way public education is funded across Illinois. To that end, he

is happy to tout his work in an education funding reform taskforce in Springfield, an effort which he hopes will soon become a concrete bill.

If drafted, the bill would aim to ad-dress the root cause of last year’s CPS clo-sures by ensuring equitable funding for

schools. A new funding formula, with its precise weighting still yet to be determined, would recognize the added resources re-quired for students living in concentrated poverty. Currently in Illinois, school fund-ing is almost wholly provided through local property taxes. Mitchell decries the reality

Mitchell’s funding has come from a wide variety of sources, but his biggest donors are the prominent Crown family, Stand for Children, and Speaker Mike Madigan’s Democratic Majority PAC. In contrast, almost all of Travis’s funds have come from sources involved in public school reform, chief among them the Chicago Teachers Union and its related PAC, the Chicagoans United for Economic Security. The contribution figures for the CUES PAC represent money that has clearly been spent rather than donated.

Sources of Major Campaign Funding

cHrISTIan mITcHELL

Stand for Children PAC, direct contribution$70,000

Crown family, direct contribution$100,000+

Speaker Mike Madigan’s Democratic Majority, direct contribution $37,555

Chicagoans United for Economic Security PAC, spent in support

$199,630

Total direct contributions$470,278

jaY TravIS

Illinois Federation of Teachers, direct contribution$20,000

Total direct contributions$73,020

Chicago Teachers Union, direct contribution$20,000

AFSCME Illinois Council 31, direct contribution$10,000

figures correct as of march 8. source: il board of elections


that a student in Winnetka “gets almost twice as much per year as compared to a student in CPS.”

“We know that general state aid is the most progressive way to fund public edu-cation that we have, and we know that the state is supposed to be providing fifty per-cent of all resources for public education, but isn’t,” he says.

The stakes are high. “[This formula] is literally the single biggest thing we can do to change the way we fund public educa-tion, to change a kid’s shot at life.”

Senate Bill 1, which was signed into law last December 5, will at-tempt to eliminate $100

billion worth of unfunded liability of statewide pen-sion systems for its public workers by 2044. The law will use a mix of frozen cost-of-living increases for retirees and active workers, and will increase the state’s minimum re-tirement age by five years. The bill passed with slender margins in both the House and Sen-ate, and Christian Mitchell’s vote for its passage has come under attack from the Travis cam-paign.

At a February rally of public sector workers in Springfield, Travis released this statement: “With his vote for SB 1, Repre-sentative Mitchell showed his true colors. He is a politician who is willing to slash the retirement security of the seniors and public servants who have worked hard, given up their Social Security, spent their money at local businesses, and formed the middle-class backbone of our communi-ties.” (Statewide, public employees do not receive Social Security.)

Travis and her backers see the bill as an attack on the “working families” of the 26th District. In a February 19 press release, Travis stressed that the “pension crisis” is a manufactured one, and that the blame should not rest with the teachers, social workers, and police officers who have

long contributed to the economic vitality of their neighborhoods. “Rather,” she said in the press release, “the problem is with the politicians who have mismanaged taxpayer dollars for over a decade, taking one pay-ment holiday after another and persistently kicking the can down the road.”

Travis supports repealing the bill, and points to revenue generation as the main solution to the current pension crisis. Cor-porations and government, she believes, must pay their fair share. Mitchell insists that his vote for SB 1 was necessary for

the long-term health of the state’s

economy,

and that

this is espe-cially true following

Moody’s downgrade of the state credit rat-ing earlier this year. Now at A3, the state’s rating is currently the lowest of any state in the country. “For every single day we did nothing,” says Mitchell, “the liability grew by $5 million. It’s almost like gangrene. If we didn’t take the hand, we would have lost the whole arm.”

Implicit in his argument is the claim that, given budget deficits, union workers would be even worse off if pensions and the minimum retirement age stayed at current levels. Illinois had a budget deficit of $3 billion in fiscal year 2014; the University of Illinois’ Fiscal Future Projects predicts that number will increase to $13 billion by 2025 if current policies remain in place.

To that end, Mitchell prefers to un-

derstand SB 1 as only one part of a radical overhaul necessary for the state’s “broken revenue system.” In his reading, Illinois arrived at this point because the state’s tax code has for too long favored the richest in society. “We have a structural deficit problem, where two-thirds of corporations pay no income tax,” he says. “We have [in Illinois] an income tax where middle-class families making between $30,000 and $75,000 a year are paying more than twice as much a share of their income as the top one percent.”

But this is also a race in which con-text is everything; a look at each candidate’s endorsements shows

that there is a widening chasm in the Cook County Democratic Party machine. Toni Preckwinkle and her supporters across the South Side—including Senator Kwame Raoul, Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, and 4th Ward Al-derman Will Burns—have been explicit in their support for Mitchell.

Preckwinkle was key in providing fi-nancial and institutional support for his first political victory, over Kenny Johnson in the 2012 primaries, and that support has not wavered. She features prominently in Mitchell’s campaign literature, and helped him canvass voters earlier this year as Elec-tion Day drew closer.

The main challenge to this exist-ing order comes primarily from the Chi-cago Teachers Union, which maintains

that Mitchell and his allies have not done enough to protect the interests of constitu-ents. Backed by the CTU, Travis has char-acterized Mitchell as a pawn of Political Action Committees and moneyed interests from outside the district. “It’s not just that he’s getting money from these PACs,” she says, “it’s that he’s voting their agenda.”

For Travis, it all comes down to demonstrating independence in show-ing accountability to the voters. While knocking on doors in a recent canvass of North Kenwood, a campaign worker for Travis told her that Preckwinkle had ac-companied Mitchell when he canvassed the district. Replied Travis, “I just feel like you should be able to walk your district by

yourself.” Mitchell, for his

part, disagrees that the Democratic political es-tablishment has failed to respond to constituents’ needs. Leaders like Pre-ckwinkle, he says, are “tough, independent, and progressive Dem-ocrats.” He draws great pride in his relationship with Preckwinkle in particular, describing her three-year tenure at

the helm of the Cook County Board as a reaffirmation of her “unassailable” progres-sive record and “unique credibility” on is-sues of criminal justice.

“I don’t feel the need to justify my relationship with these really, really great folks,” he says. “I’m extremely proud of my affiliations with them.” It’s an affiliation that Preckwinkle is happy to confirm. Over email, she expressed her disappointment with the “misleading attacks” on Mitchell, and reaffirmed her support for him because “he’s committed to our community and our public schools.”

Mitchell has raised over $470,000 since October, and many of those contri-butions reflect his close ties to big names in Illinois politics. The Democratic Major-ity PAC, controlled by Speaker Madigan, has contributed over $37,000 to his cam-paign. Senator Raoul’s PAC has contrib-uted $15,000. Notably, the Crown family,

“[This formula] is literally the single biggest thing we can do to change the way we fund public education, to change a kid’s shot at life.”

Christian Mitchell

allison torem

PRIMARIES


Back on the Stroll“Mecca Flat Blues” at the Chicago Cultural Center

BY RACHEL SCHASTOK

“Early recorded music was all about gears and humidity,” Chicago Cultural Histori-

an Tim Samuelson declared, opening his talk on the “Mecca Flat Blues” exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center last week. A small audience gathered in front of the stage where Samuelson, the curator of the exhibit, stood with a century-old Victrola and a player piano. He was there, he ex-plained, to explain the connections be-tween Bronzeville’s since-demolished Mecca Flats building and the music scene that existed around it and, occasionally, under its roof.

The Mecca Flats building was con-structed at the corner of 34th and State Streets for the 1893 World’s Columbi-an Exposition. Designed as a hotel for wealthy fairgoers, the Flats featured ornate ironwork, a central courtyard, and a large sky-lit atrium. Real-estate speculators were soon disappointed, though; even the Flats’ luxurious features could not persuade visi-tors to leave the Fair’s main action on the Midway. In an effort to salvage the proj-ect, the Mecca Flats were opened as apart-ments in 1893.

Mecca Flats came to be a central hub of the Stroll, the stretch of Afri-can-American businesses that centered on Bronzeville’s South State Street. Samuel-son explained, “Club doors to the street stayed open, so you could decide where you wanted to hear your music.” Often, wan-derers on the Stroll would also spill into the Flats’ large open atriums.

Enormous photographic enlarge-ments of the building’s interior, arranged

panoramically throughout the gallery, give visitors the impression of standing on an interior balcony overlooking Mecca Flats’ central atrium. “I couldn’t have done the show ten years ago,” Samuelson said after the talk, “but now I was able to find the only sixteen-foot photo printer in the Mid-west.”

The enlargements lend a sinister air to the exhibit. The photos were taken for articles in Life and Harper’s magazines shortly before the building was condemned and demolished in 1952. The exhibit’s wall text explains that editors rejected optimis-tic portraits of the building’s community networks in favor of images that supported the building’s reputation as a den of danger and crime. Though the exhibit does not ex-plicitly say so, the neglect and sensational-ized decline of Mecca Flats seems to have foreshadowed the fate of Chicago’s public housing high-rises several decades later.

Samuelson played records and play-er-piano rolls from his personal collection to demonstrate the antiquated musical technology of the day. One object in his collection was a piano roll of one of Mec-ca Flats’ first African American residents, Joe Jordan’s 1909 hit “That Teasin’ Rag.” Though the chair in front of the player pi-ano remained empty, its keys were pressed down as if by ghosts, and, for a moment, the melody of Mecca Flats was brought back to life. ¬

Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. Through May 25.

Monday-Thursday, 10am-7pm; Friday-Sunday, 10am-6pm. Free.

courtesy chicago cultural center

led by Chicago financier and philanthropist Lester Crown, has collectively given more than $100,000. The Crown family is one of the main contributors to the Stand for Children Illinois PAC, which has ideolog-ically opposed the CTU and its leadership since forming in 2010. During the 2012 teachers’ strike, a petition backed by Stand for Children accused the union of “hold-ing our students hostage in a negotiation where they have no voice.” The PAC has been the largest single donor to Mitchell’s campaign, giving him a total of $60,000 in 2014 alone.

Travis sees moneyed interests like Crown as not having the true interests of South Siders in mind. “He’s regularly en-joying money from Lester Crown and peo-ple of that level of influence who are not necessarily based in this district,” she says.

To rebut Travis’s claim that he has been captured by big money, Mitchell points to endorsements from unions like the Illinois chapter of the AFL-CIO and grassroots organizations like the People’s Lobby. A statement released by his cam-paign on March 10 reiterated that Mitchell “has consistently fought for working fam-ilies.”

For her part, Travis accuses the state Democratic Party of denying her access to lists of registered voters simply because she was challenging an incumbent. Her cam-paign has effectively been bankrolled by the CTU and its PAC, Chicagoans United for Economic Security, which was formed very recently on February 5. The CTU is the largest direct contributor to Travis’s campaign, having donated $20,000 in to-tal. But far more important is Chicagoans United, which has spent $199,000 on Tra-vis’s behalf in uncoordinated spending. The money has gone toward ads on WVON and local TV stations.

Without the CTU’s support, it’s un-likely that Travis’s campaign would have happened at all. In many ways, she’s the union’s ideal candidate: with her back-ground in KOCO, she has long-standing organizing relationships with individual

teachers and a history of seeing eye-to-eye with the union. Brandon Johnson of the CTU says “Jay Travis has shown herself to be a champion for students, a strong ad-vocate for publicly-funded neighborhood schools.”

The CTU’s role in her campaign is one that Travis embraces. “Through the years,” she says, “we [KOCO] have worked with many organizations throughout this city to promote what actually works in public schools. In this push, the CTU has been an organization that has consistently stood for making sure that neighborhood schools get the support that they need.”

Political arguments over the future of Chicago’s public schools will likely continue beyond this election. In the

legislative session beginning March 19 in Springfield, lawmakers will debate wheth-er to reduce the retirement benefits owed to public school teachers. If the state is not freed from these obligations, they will be required to make a budget-busting $696 million contribution to the Teachers’ Re-tirement System for fiscal year 2015, more than three times last year’s figure. Repre-sented by Travis, Mitchell, or Republican Jacob “Coby” Hakalir, who is running un-opposed for the GOP, the 26th District will likely make a meaningful impact on the outcome of that vote. Travis, with her ties to the CTU, is likely to vote against such a measure; Mitchell, having voted for SB 1 and received support from Stand for Children, seems more likely to vote yea.

With mayoral and aldermanic elec-tions looming in February 2015, it’s like-ly that the Mitchell-Travis race represents only the first shot across the bow in a CTU-led effort to shake-up Chicago pol-itics. For now, the union sees state elec-tions as its battleground. “Springfield,” said CTU President Karen Lewis in a recent interview with Crain’s Chicago Business, “is where we have to look to change the landscape politically.” ¬

All spending figures as of March 8.


For the RecordOne woman’s struggle leads to a referendum in Auburn Gresham

BY OLIVIA ADAMS

B uried within the fifty-three-page March 18 Chicago primary sheet lies a seemingly innocuous refer-

endum on court recording. The statement reads, “Shall the Cook County Board exer-cise its authority to require the Chief Judge of the Cook County Circuit Court imme-diately issue an Administrative Order to allow Electronic Recording in Domestic Relations courtrooms where no court re-porter is present and litigants cannot afford a private court-reporter at a cost of $250 - $350 per hour not including transcripts.”

This yes/no vote on the allowance of personal electronic recording devices with-in a court room concerns just one precinct in just one ward of Cook County, and came about through a petition that had just thirty-one signatures. These signees hailed primarily from two streets in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood on the Far South Side. Each name is a mark of the determination of a single neighborhood woman to find a solution for her personal struggles to find a voice in the Cook Coun-ty divorce and custody courts.

In January 2008, GwyendolynChubb filed for divorce from her allegedly abusive husband Steve Shavers, who was arrested in 2007 for domestic battery against Chubb (in addition to two other similar charges from his previous marriage). Shavers, an employee of the City of Chicago, worked as the Special Assistant to Chicago City Council President Todd Stroger during the duration of the divorce proceedings.

While attempting to appeal the re-sulting court decision and regain custody of her two children, Chubb was informed by a court reporter in 2008 that transcripts of the proceedings were not available. Ac-cording to the Cook County Court Re-

porters’ office, judges are responsible for determining if a court case should go off the record. If the judge deems this neces-sary, the court reporter assigned to that particular case refrains from making any notes of the meeting, thus eliminating the possibility of the statements made in the courtroom being used for an appeal.

Domestic Relations is a unique divi-sion within the Cook County court system, in that it is the only division that does not provide video cameras for court cases. In a 2012 meeting with local court reporters, Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans discussed the impact of a January 2012 Il-linois Supreme Court ruling allowing the use of video cameras in all state courtrooms on transparency between the courts and their constituencies:

“I wouldn’t want to prevent the pub-lic from knowing what happens in court because of the recalcitration of the judge,” said Evans. “They need to know what goes on here.”

But because Domestic Relations still prohibits cameras the transparency of do-

mestic court cases, including divorce and custody cases, remains almost completely within the control of the judge. Although court proceedings are open to the public and anyone can sit in on a session to take notes or spectate, prohibition of any type of electronic recording device places domestic cases at the risk of obscurity more than cas-es in any other division of the courts.

For Chubb, this inconsistency, and its implications for families affected by diffi-cult divorce and custody battles, necessi-tated action. Her concerns lie most deeply with the lack of transparency, which cre-ate potential for individuals to be shut out of their own domestic disputes. A closed courtroom with an off-the-record order from the presiding judge essentially creates a vacuum for any revelations or inaccuracies expressed during the case. Yet no accessible check exists to verify the legitimacy of a closed-door court.

Consequently, Chubb believes that enabling individuals to bring personal re-cording devices into the courtroom will help to resolve the inequalities that lurk

behind closed courtroom doors and to fa-cilitate later appeals cases.

Chubb’s decision to target the small Auburn Gresham community began as a consequence of failure to meet the prima-ry referendum deadline, but has developed into a larger battle for all of Cook County’s Domestic Relations courts.

“The advice I got from [Alderman Fio-retti of Ward 2] was to try and test it [with the primary election for Auburn Gresham], and then use that to come back to Cook County commissioners and say, ‘will you sponsor this?” said Chubb.

If they do, and a if wider referendum takes place, questions about how fami-lies—specifically divorced parents—fare within the county court system will be raised for all of Cook County’s Domestic Relations courts, potentially illuminating the difficulties of defending oneself against imposed legal restrictions. ¬

Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, 929 E. 60th St. Through March 7. Monday-Friday,

11am-4pm. (773)834-1936. graycenter.uchicago.edu

On March 18, a referendum asks whether the Cook County Board should “issue an administrative order to allow electronic

recording in domestic relations courtrooms where no court reporter is present and litigants cannot afford a

private court reporter.”

PRIMARIES


VISUAL ARTS

Renaissance Re-VisitedIn celebration of Women’s History Month 2014, the South Side Community Art Center presents “Renais-sance Re-visited: New Eyes on the Woman in the Black Chicago Renaissance.” The Black Chicago Renaissance, which gained less media traction than the Harlem Renaissance but was ideologically and creatively similar, spring-boarded the success of many South Side musi-cians, writers, and visual artists. This exhibition focuses on “the woman as artist and the woman as subject” in the art of the Renaissance, allowing us to reflect on over seventy years of change, struggle, and progress from the days of Koko Taylor and Gwendolyn Brooks. South Side Community Art Center, 3831 S. Michigan Ave. Opening reception Friday, March 14, 6pm. (773)373-1026. south-sidecommunityartcenter.com (Katryce Lassle)

2nd Fridays Gallery NightWhat better way to spend a Friday evening than by wan-dering through dozens of open art spaces around Pilsen’s South Halsted and 18th Streets, schmoozing with artists and art lovers alike—for free? On the second Friday of every month, Pilsen’s Chicago Arts District hosts a 2nd Fridays Gallery Night to sate the artsy voyeur in you. Galleries and studio spaces alike are open to the public, allowing you to not only visit some of Pilsen’s running exhibitions, but to catch a glimpse of works-in-progress and the artists behind them. Chicago Arts District, 1821 S. Halsted St. Friday, March 14, 6pm-10pm. Second Friday of every month. Free. (312)738-8000 ext 108. chicagoarts-district.org (Katryce Lassle)

Question BridgeDuSable Museum presents the third and final install-ment in their ongoing series on black males in America, “Question Bridge: Black Males.” The general consensus that fuels a project like “Question Bridge” is that not enough has been done to explore, in pop culture and otherwise, the internal complexity that exists under the umbrella of “black men,” a demographic that is so frequently reduced to stereotypes and misrepresenta-tions. “Far too little is known about the range of internal values and dynamics of this group,” the event description laments. The “Question Bridge” project has been grap-pling with this in different capacities since 1996, using an open question-and-answer video format to prompt black men from across the country to discuss the com-plexities of black male identity. DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. March 14-May 18. Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm; Sunday noon-5pm. (773)947-4600. dusablemuseum.org (Katryce Lassle)

Tentatively TitledThis definitely isn’t your grandmother’s art show. For its debut exhibition, Sunday Project’s “Tentatively Titled” shines a light on what might be this generation’s biggest Achilles heel: our ever-growing, ever-changing, fairly constant connection to digital technology and social media, in juxtaposition with the “perceived banality” of everyday, analog, physical being. This conflict very distinctly belongs to those of us who, to varying degrees, live and breathe in virtual reality. Confront the para-doxes of your twenty-first-century existence; connect, or re-connect, with your physical self; maybe even turn off your phone. Sunday Project, 1344 W. 18th Pl. #1F. Through March 29. sunday-project.com (Katryce Lassle)

East of Que VillageThe human eye cannot comprehend six disparate videos simultaneously—this is what avant-garde Chinese artist Yang Fudong is counting on. This multi-screened collection of narratives is intended to be non-linear. The videos presented stretch across more than twenty years of the artist’s career, from the early film “After All I Didn’t Force You” (1998) to “The Half Hitching Post” (2005). The title film, “East of Que Village,” is centered on the artist’s home village in the province of Hebei. The exhibit itself is intended to work in conjunction with “Envision China: A Festival of Arts & Culture,” which UChicago Arts will run from February to June. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E 60th St. Through March 30. Tues-day-Saturday, 9am-8pm, Sunday, 11am-8pm. (773)702-2787. arts.uchicago.edu (Sarah Claypoole)

Visual EndsEphemerality. Intangibility. The human condition. Countless artists throughout the course of history have attempted to transform these universal abstractions into something comprehensible through impressive words, grandiose imagery, bold colors, and experimental techniques. Yet one gallery in Chicago has undertaken the task of enabling both local and international artists to make physical these imperceptibles through simple installations of sound, light, and movement. Two single glowing light bulbs suspended in the air. Resonating vibrations in a room full of crystal glasses. “Performa-tive” interactions with nude models. These are just a few of the past exhibitions displayed at the “Visual Ends: The Edge of Perception” exhibition at FLAT Chicago. FLAT, 2023 S. Ruble St. Through March 30. Satur-day-Sunday, 1pm-4pm. Viewing available by appointment. [email protected] (Maha Ahmed)

Library of LoveAs the temperatures rise and the wind begins to subside, the memory of this hellish winter will begin to slowly melt away. It will become easier to feel fondness for our city again. With love on the mind after Valentine’s Day and the arrival of spring on the horizon, now is the per-fect opportunity to take some time to think about love and Chicago in the same setting. “Library of Love” is an interactive exhibit—hosted by the Washington Park Arts Incubator and a slew of UofC partners—which serves as homage to both love and to Chicago. Members of the community are invited to take some quiet time to reflect on these subjects and materials will be available to those who would like to write their own love letters. Arts Incubator, 301 E. Garfield Blvd. Through March 31. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, noon-3pm. arts.uchicago.edu (Lucia Ahrensdorf)

Teen Paranormal RomanceBubble, bubble, werewolves and stubble, heartstrings burn and profits double...Once in a blue moon, artists commune to ponder the most pressing question of our time: Team Edward or Team Jacob? For lo, “Teen Paranormal Romance” is upon us. This group show invites everyone from “Twilight” acolytes to skeptic academics into the Renaissance Society to examine how the surging popularity of the “teenage paranormal romance” genre embodies our cultural moment. It also hopes to examine why Bella is okay with Edward watching her sleep. The Renaissance Society itself says it best: “This exhibition samples artistic production in the wake of a zeitgeist that has rendered the unconscious a derelict playground home to weeds of surrealism.” And who doesn’t like a good playground? Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Avenue, Fourth Floor. Through April 13. Tuesday-Friday, 10am-5pm; Saturday-Sunday, noon-5pm. (773)702-8670. renaissancesociety.org (Cindy Dapogny)

Photorealism in the Digital AgeFor New York-based artist Yigal Ozeri and other photorealistic painters, there is much to be gained by rendering a photograph with paint on canvas. The works they produce capture all of the detail and depth of a pho-tograph, and simultaneously seem to project the image into an ethereal, dreamy world beyond our own. With the quality of digital photography constantly improving, photorealistic painters can capture and magnify intricate details more vividly (and realistically) than ever. Mana Contemporary Chicago explores some of Israeli-born Ozeri’s most recent work in their upcoming exhibition “Photorealism in the Digital Age,” shedding light on an ever-changing form of painting that has fascinated for decades. Mana Contemporary Chicago, 2233 S. Throop St. Through April 15. Call for gallery hours. (312)850-8301. manafinearts.com (Katryce Lassle)

Topographical DepictionsMultidisciplinary artist Samantha Hill makes history every day at the Hyde Park Art Center. More accurately, Hill is constantly reshaping history, experimenting with archival and narrative practices to tell the stories of Bronzeville’s storied past in the liveliest of ways. Her first solo exhibition, “Topographical Depictions,” is Hill’s attempt to construct a vibrant and ever-changing map of one South Side neighborhood’s history; the ex-hibition, which encourages audience participation, won’t look the same from one moment to the next. Part of the gallery is set up as an “office” in which Hill will work in real time every Saturday. She will also be creating

tintype portraits of prominent Bronzeville community members, which will be displayed at Bronzeville’s Blanc Gallery starting February 28. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through May 18. “Office hours” Saturdays, 11am-3pm. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Sat-urday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Katryce Lassle)

Performing ImagesFrom the late fourteenth to the early twentieth centu-ries, opera and theater were central to Chinese cultural life at the Imperial Court and in rural villages alike. This flowering of theater produced an inevitable ripple effect far beyond the stage. Operatic motifs are found on ce-ramics, scroll paintings, books, fans, and textiles. “Per-forming Images,” a new exhibit at the Smart Museum of Art, compiles a stunning array of such objects from the Ming and Qing dynasties. The show is being launched in concert with a five-month-long festival, “Envisioning China: A Festival of Arts and Culture,” that celebrates Chinese art, history, and culture with over forty events. “Performing Images” runs alongside another exhibit at the Smart, “Inspired by the Opera: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video.” Together, these two collections form an unbroken narrative of an important field of Chinese visual art from its origins in medieval opera through its present incarnation. Smart Muse-um of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. Through June 15. Tuesday-Wednesday, 10am-5pm; Thursday, 10am-8pm; Friday-Sunday, 10am-5pm. (773)702-0200. smartmuse-um.uchicago.edu (Lillian Selonick)

Silk Road and Indian Ocean TradersDid you know that archaeologists have found Chinese ceramics in excavations all over the Middle East? Find-ings like this reveal parts of the story of international trade in antiquity. They provide the basis for “Silk Road and Indian Ocean Traders: Connecting China and the Middle East,” a small exhibit open now at the Oriental Institute. The exhibit includes both Chinese and Middle Eastern artifacts, which, when viewed together, demonstrate the influence of Chinese inventions and innovations on Middle Eastern craft. Guest curator and research associate at the Institute, Tasha Vorderstrasse, will give a gallery talk on May 1 at 12:15pm. Oriental Institute, 1155 E. 58th St. Through June 29. Tuesday-Sun-day, 10am-6pm; Wednesday, 10am-8:30pm. Free, $10 suggested donation. (773)702-9514. oi.uchicago.edu (Rachel Schastok)

FragmentosIt’s how most of us remember our childhood: in frag-ments, abstract bits of memories that we are sometimes surprised we’ve kept with us. We all carry mental maps of our youth; Mexican-American artist Pilar Acevedo lays hers out in full color. She works through poetry, painting, sound, sculpture, and found materials to reimagine not only her childhood, but also the aspects of childhood that many women share. Surreal, uncanny, and even a bit frightening, “Fragmentos” places girlhood in a dream space that might turn into a nightmare at any moment. You survived childhood; “Fragmentos” is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on those years you thought you’d forgotten. National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. Through July 13. Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-5pm. Free. (312)738-1503. nationalmuseumofmexi-canart.org (Katryce Lassle)

STAGE & SCREEN

Godspell“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” “Veggie Tales.” “Passion of the Christ” (directors’ cut). “Godspell” isn’t the only popular biblical musical out there, and it wasn’t the first, but in 1972 it was hot enough to hoist a song to thirteenth place on the Billboard Top 100. Not even rock opera “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” this musical’s edgy, badboy sibling, made it so big. This weekend, the prodigal son(g) returns as “Godspell” makes its debut at a true bastion of secularity, the University of Chicago. Director Marisa Chilberg sets the show in Hyde Park, recasting the play as a parable of community. The show promises to bring a production of head and heart to the Logan Center’s The-ater West, as college kids rediscover togetherness. Still, the fare should be light—it’s a musical, for Christ’s sake.

Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Theater West. March 13-15. Thursday-Friday, 7:30pm; Saturday, 2pm and 7:30pm. $6 in advance, $8 starting two hours before the show. (773)753-4821. arts.uchicago.edu (Hannah Nyhart)

I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean TrampIt’s always interesting to see how old-time punks clean up as they get older. Richard Hell, one said punk, has paused to write it all down. Never mind 1977—Hell started offending sensibilities back in 1969, when he formed the influential proto-punk band Television. After inspiring numerous musicians with his early per-formances at New York’s CBGB, he went on to become frontman of the Voodoids, who are said to have inspired the Sex Pistols’ famous safety-pins-and-studs look. Now, Hell is touring in support of his latest work, an autobiography entitled “I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp.” The book details his early life in Kentucky and his rise to prominence after arriving broke in the now-mythical bohemian New York City of the 1970s as a teenager. The bookstore hosting Hell promises he’lll sign anything you can think of to bring—as long as you buy the book. 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St. Friday, March 14. 6pm. Free. (773)684-1300. semcoop.com. (Rachel Schastok)

Charlemagne PalestinePerformance artist and sound-maker Charlemagne Palestine is coming to the Logan Center. Once Brook-lyn-based, Palestine now works out of Brussels, but, wooed by the promise of our cheery winter weather, he’s decided to make a week-long visit to Chicago. Palestine has cultivated a loyal fanbase for his live performances, but the Hyde Park portion of his stay will be a display of video works spanning from 1973-2013. Palestine’s work is often constructed of unrelenting repetitions that morph as the piece continues. His 1976 short film “Island Song” is sixteen minutes of jostled camera work in grainy black and white as the artist motors around a coastline. The accompanying soundscape is one of guttural, wordless chants punctuated by “Okay here,” and (over and over and over again) “We’ve gotta get out of here.” It ends with a foghorn, and sounds like the sort of thing you might like, if this is the sort of thing you like. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Friday, March 14, 7pm. Free with limited seating. filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu (Hannah Nyhart)

RioPlaywright Jeremy Menekseoglu’s latest work takes his audience to a small town in Texas by the Rio Grande. The border village finds itself in the grip of a mysterious mass killer—disappeared bodies keep turning up dead and hacked to pieces downstream. Into this ghost-town-to-be wanders Mary Graves, who’s on the run from an abusive husband. Dream Theatre bills the show as “a furious story of love, hope, innocence, forgiveness, mass murder and... karaoke!” The company first performed the play fifteen years ago, but the new Chicago cast and the intervening years promise a fresh show. And in the middle of an unceasing polar vortex, Texas, even a Texas plagued by evil and karaoke, sounds pretty good.Dream Theatre Company, 556 W. 18th St. Through March 16, Thursday-Saturday, 8pm; Sunday, 7pm. $22. (773)552-8616. dreamtheatrecompany.com (Hannah Nyhart)

Story Club South SideLooking for a story? Co-Prosperity sphere offers your monthly dose of “let me tell you...” via Tuesday’s “Story Club South Side.” The tales are tall; the tellers are of varying heights but maximum talent. Set performers include Seven Deadly Sins show producer Angela Vela, NYT essayist Alan Neff, and “Storyteller, masseuse, and Quantum Leap aficionado” Dennis Frymire. This month’s theme takes a canine approach to the art form: “Chase Your Own Tale” will require authors to begin and end their story with the same sentence. Early arrivals will have the chance to sign up for the open mic section which will complete the six-piece set. The show is proudly BYO, encouraging guests to pick up brews from the nearby Maria’s or a savory pie from the adjoining Pleasant House Bakery. Looking for a story? Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan St. Tuesday, March 18. Sign up 7:30pm; show 8pm. $10 recommended donation. BYOB & BYOPie. (773)837-0145. storyclubchicago.com (Hannah Nyhart)

ARTS CALENDAR


MUSIC

Mystikal at MidnightMystikal is a News Orleans-based rapper who’s been around since the mid-nineties. He’s been away for awhile dealing with legal trouble, but now he’s back in Chicago and will be appearing at the Shrine on March 17 along with DJ Wildboy. This may be your only opportunity to catch the inimitable author of such songs as “Shake It Fast” and the scintillating “Danger,” so be sure not to miss it. This show is billed as a “midnight” show, but doors will officially be opening at 11 and the show is free if you manage to get in before midnight. Hit up the Shrine on the early side and be sure to catch the midnight magic. The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash. Monday, March 17. Doors at 11pm. Free before midnight. (312)753-5700. theshrinechicago.com. (Jake Bittle)

Weepin’ WillowsThe sultry voice of Patsy Cline and the emotional punch of her music are not easy things to mimic. But Patsy Cline cover band Weepin’ Willows has encapsulated the emotion behind Cline’s lyrics and embedded it onto their own renditions of the music. Performing at the Beverly Arts Center, Weepin’ Willows will be showcas-ing their music March 22. As a center that seeks to fuse styles and influences to present a wide range of art and entertainment to both the surrounding community and the greater Chicagoland area, the Beverly Arts Center is the perfect place for a band like the Weepin’ Willows to showcase their own fusions of musical talent, lyrical style, and feeling. Of course, anything less would be do-ing a disservice to the fabulous Patsy Cline. Come on in.Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. Saturday, March 22, 8 pm. $22. (773)445-3838. beverlyartcenter.org. (Cristina Ochoa)

Chidlewild: The Outkast ExperienceWhile Outkast has made many albums which rank among the greatest works of music ever recorded, the 2006 soundtrack album “Idlewild” is not one of them. Part of the problem is that “Idlewild” isn’t really a standalone album. It’s a compilation of tracks which were previously released on the double album “Speaker-boxx/The Love Below” and the greatest-hits collection, “Big Boi and Dre Present...Outkast.” The second problem is that the “Idlewild” movie—an anachronistic period-piece musical which placed Big Boi and Andre 3000 in depression-era Georgia—was widely panned by

critics. All these things considered, the Shrine has none-theless decided to name its upcoming Outkast tribute “Chidlewild.” The show will feature live performances from the the Verzatile band, who will be covering all of your favorite Outkast classics. Hopefully, the show itself will be more like “ATLiens” and less like “Idlewild.”The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash. Friday, March 21, Doors at 7pm. $15-$35. (312)753-5700. theshrinechicago.com. (Zach Goldhammer)

Sexy Sax and Other Horny HornsDo you still think ska is cool? Join your fellow wax-lovers for Sexy Sex and Other Horny Horns, an in-nuendo-laden night of fun at Reggies latest installment of their Wax On Wax Off series. Come horny: this is a horns-themed BYOVinyl event, so sign up day-of or in advance for a chance to toot your own horn for the whole club. If your record collection is lacking, Record Breakers next door is lending out used and opened vinyl for the event. All genres are encouraged, so long as the cut features horn sections or solos. Reggies, 2105 S. State St. Wednesday, March 26. Sign-up starts 7pm, or RSVP to [email protected]. Free. 21+. (312)949-0120. reggieslive.com (Rachel Schastok)

The UnderachieverAlong with their neighborhood collaborators, the Flat-bush Zombies, the Underachievers have played an inte-gral role in reinventing the sound of New York hip-hop by adding a psychedelic twist. Their name comes from early misperceptions of the group being lazy potheads who would never achieve real success. The Flatbush duo, which is comprised of rappers AK and Issa Gold, were signed to Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label in 2012 and have continued to climb to greater and greater heights since then. Their trademark sound is certainly unique, though its frequent references to lysergic bliss inevitably draw comparisons to Chicago’s Acid Rap king, Chance the Rapper. When the high-achieving Underarchievers arrive at Reggies, it will be up to Chi-town fans to de-cide whether the New York group can stake their claim in the Midwest. Reggies, 2105 S. State St. April 11. Doors at 7:30pm, $15-$20. 21+. (312)949-0120. reggieslive.com (Zach Goldhammer)

WHPK Rock ChartsWHPK 88.5 FM is a nonprofit community radio station at the University of Chicago. Once a week the station’s music directors collect a book of playlist logs from their Rock-format DJs, tally up the plays of albums added within the last few months, and rank them according to popularity that week.

Compiled by Rachel Schastok and Charlie Rock

Artist / Album / Record Label1. Toupee / Dinner Parties / Rotted Tooth2. Oozing Wound / Retrash / Thrill Jockey3. Cherry Glazerr / Haxel Princess / Burger4. ONO / Diegesis / Moniker5. Gino + the Goons / Oh Yeah / Pelican Pow Wow6. D/P/I / 08.DD.15 / Leaving7. TacocaT / NVM / Hardly Art8. OK Sara / Mutt Tracks / Athletic Tapes9. Quilt / Held in Splendor / Mexican Summer10. Rectal Hygienics / Cold Meat / Diseased Audio11. C L E A N E R S / Real Raga Shit Vol. 1 / Bootleg Tapes12. Torn Halk / Through Force of Will / Not Not Fun13. Vaghe Stelle / Sweet Sixteen / Astro:Dynamics14. Watchout! / Flashbacker / Permanent15. Basic Cable / I’m Good to Drive / Permanent

March 12, 2014

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