Step through this door to visit Altgeld Gardens’ new farmers market. Photo by Manquaze Allen.

Marguerite Jacobs is the founder of Altgeld Gardens’ new farmers market located at 939 East 130th Place. Mrs. Jacobs, who happens to be my mother, gets her fresh produce and supplies from Pembroke, Illinois. Vegetables, peanuts and fruit are sold at the market for a low price. The food is freshly grown, so there are no chemicals in her vegetables and fruit. Here are a few items that Mrs. Jacobs sells: potatoes, onions, peppers, oranges, carrots and much more.

“Altgeld is a food dessert community. I feel that the younger kids are exposed to so much fat foods and not enough healthy products. The farmers market will give the kids good choices to eat,” said Mrs. Jacobs. She spent much of the time preparing to open the market at Altgeld in June of 2012. Now she is selling her produce and in 10 months her goal is to start selling meat.

Mrs. Jacobs has big plans. Once she starts selling meat, she plans to put together a food bag that will consist of vegetables and two different types of meat for $10. The bags used at the farmers market are environmentally friendly bags. When the residents buy the food, they can bring the bags back to shop again and they can wash the bags. She wants to make it easy for seniors to buy. She even has an Illinois Link machine so the residents can purchase food. She is helping everyone have access to healthy food.

We heard that the CHA wanted to demolish Altgeld Gardens because they said there is nothing happening here. Now we have a store and a place for youth to work. Mrs. Jacobs wants to help youth during the summers, too; she’s paying the youths to help packing the food. She is doing as much as she can to help out the Altgeld community. “Some people think the residents in this area want things for free. We have hard working people living in this neighborhood, and the kids feel like its no hope,” expressed Mrs. Jacobs.

My mother volunteers to show my sister and me that hard work is how you get ahead and that nothing is free. She says that this is a self-sustaining neighborhood and she is willing to do her part to make it happen. Her daily schedule starts with safety patrol from 7:30 am-8:30 am and after that, she spends time in the farmers market. My mother is giving good inspiration to others within the Altgeld community.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor talks to a young fan at a recent book signing and lecture at the Harold Washington Library. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte.

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor declares proudly that she has a lot in common with poor people, including public housing tenants. She should know, since she grew up in a South Bronx public housing project “in abject poverty struggling with an illness, in a dysfunctional family.”
Sotomayor, who became an instant American icon after her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Barack Obama in May 2009, shared more about her early life there during a recent visit to Chicago promoting her memoir, “My Beloved World.”
The book covers her transition from her early life growing up in New York City to becoming a judge on the country’s highest federal bench. Early life in public housing was not easy, she said to the audience in the jam-packed auditorium at the downtown Harold Washington Library last month. However, her role models, including her mother, and her perseverance in the face of obstacles to her life’s goals allowed her to gain success and become the first Latina and third woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Growing up a juvenile diabetic with an alcoholic father, in an era where things like that were kept hidden, where poverty was something that was perceived as shameful, where being a Latina in situations where I had been made to feel uncomfortable,” was very hard, Sotomayor said.

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor mingles with the crowd at the Harold Washington Library during a recent book-signing and lecture. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte.

“So many of us, not just Latinos, I think anybody who feels different, anyone who had a life challenge of any kind – a parent or loved one with addictions, anyone who had dealt with chronic diseases of themselves or someone they loved. Anyone who’s been poor or anyone who has felt insecure, we share similar emotions and we share similar enough experiences that I had hoped that in writing about them two things would happen: The first is my favorite line in the book, it’s a passage in which I’m talking about the value of role models by describing how meeting your first role model, the person who shows you that you can be a path to success, is perhaps the most important moment in every young person’s life,” she added.
Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent, said she also wanted to “have fun writing her book.
“I wanted people to come see a piece of my life. To experience the moments that were fun and enjoyable that taught lessons at the same time,” she said.
Sotomayor read excerpts of her book that talked about her appearance as a youth, meeting her husband, and her good and bad times being raised in public housing. She credited her mother, some aunts and uncles as being her inspiration who instilled in her an extraordinary sense of determination and the power of believing in oneself.
Sotomayor also encouraged others, especially the youth, to persevere in reaching their life’s goal despite the obstacles they too face.
“It’s not the idea of reaching a dream,” she said. “Because sometimes you can’t for a lot of reasons outside your control, but what you can do is enjoy the process of trying. Never be afraid to say, ‘I don’t know these people.’ And then reach out to others and ask for help and learn how to enrich yourself,” Sotomayor said.
After answering some of the audience members’ questions, Sotomayor sat behind a desk to sign books.

Background
Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1976 and received her law degree from Yale in 1979, according to the Chicago Public Library press release announcing her visit. Sotomayor “has the rare distinction” of being nominated and confirmed to three federal judiciary posts by three different presidents. In 1991, she was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H.W. Bush. President Bill Clinton nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1997 and President Obama nominated her for the Supreme Court.
“The Bronxdale Houses and Bronxdale Community Center was renamed after Sotomayor, who lived in the 28-building housing complex between 1957 to 1970,” according to a news report in May 2010.

Activist and photographer Bernard Kleina (left) talks to Chicago Freedom School graduate Richard Wilson at a recent commemoration for Dr. Martin Luther King. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte.

People around the city recently celebrated the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while organizing to continue the fight for social justice.

The Chicago Freedom School, a non-profit organization which trains people at all ages in social justice organizing techniques, hosted an “intergenerational” program to honor Dr. King’s activism in Chicago at Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn St., several weeks ago.

In the first half of their 3-hour program, an intergenerational roster of the organizations involved talked to the audience about how Dr. King “brought organizing, marches and political change to the South and beyond.” In this city, the event organizers recalled that King “mobilized mass marches on the Southwest side, lived and shared community with residents on the West Side, and fought for fair housing justice for all of Chicago.”

Discussion on Past and Present

After the film, the program participants broke out into small groups for an interactive workshop on racially motivated gentrification tactics by wealthy realtors between 1905 and 1962. They also examined current housing segregation and displacement in Chicago more than 45 years after Dr. King’s work locally.

In the small groups, the participants had to match up dates to example cases of segregation events that took place in the city before the Chicago Freedom Movement, such as the establishment of Chinatown around Van Buren and Clark streets in 1905.  They also dealt with the proliferation of “racial restrictive covenants” that began in 1927; the “restrictive covenants” were contractual agreements among property owners that prohibited the purchase, lease or occupation of their building by a particular group of people, usually African Americans.

The organizers then discussed how “redlining” of districts began in 1934, which primarily targeted African Americans, Latino, Asian and Jewish neighborhoods, deeming them “high risk” areas for real-estate investments and denying residents mortgages and home improvement loans, regardless of their financial history.

The establishment of the Chicago Housing Authority in 1937 was another highlight of discussion, which the Freedom School organizers said resulted in massive amounts of public housing being constructed in black residential areas on the South and West sides, largely due to white aldermen who refused to allow public housing to be built in their wards.

Construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway was another example the Freedom School organizers cited as having created “an enormous physical barrier” separating Black and white residents on the city’s South Side. First named the “South Route Expressway,” the new road was designed to travel along 400 west, a block from former Mayor Richard J. Daley’s home grounds in the Bridgeport area. But just a month after the former Robert Taylor Homes was approved to be built, the route was changed to go along Wentworth Avenue, “a street which was a well-established racial divide in the City,” according to the Freedom School.

Youth Alumni

Richard Wilson, a senior at Dwight D. Eisenhower High School in Blue Island and a 2011 Freedom School alumnus, said during the event that “I feel like without us studying the past social justice movement, we really wouldn’t understand the fundamentals of how to make a movement today.”

Jasmine Thomas, a 2011 Freedom School alumnus and senior at Young Women Leadership Charter School in the Bronzeville community, told RJ after the event that young people like her should become more like Dr. King and get involved in social justice issues.

“He knew who he was and what he stood for,” she said. “That’s what made people believe in what he did. So I feel like we as young people need to define ourselves instead of being involved in the latest trends.”

Chris Williams, a 2010 alumnus and senior at Walter Dyett High School, told RJ that by participating in CFS programs, he learned a lot about oppression and struggles within the community. He even gave a few speeches and did actions based on social justice. Williams added that young people should carry on Dr. King’s legacy.

“I think he was bold,” Williams said. “He fought for us to do a lot of stuff that we can do today.”

The program also included an exhibit of photographs of Dr. King and others during the Chicago Freedom Movement in Grant and Marquette Parks from 1965-66 captured by activist and photographer Bernard Kleina, who was a Catholic priest at that time.

Kleina told RJ that he donated his iconic photographs to the Freedom School event. “Some of the photographs also tell us about what we need to do now,” Kleina said. “The fight is far from over.”

Tony Alvarado-Rivera, coordinator of the Freedom School’s youth programs, told RJ before the program that youth participants at the school have been busy keeping the attitude of Dr. King and others regarding social justice issues. By doing things to eradicate racial inequalities among people of color, such as addressing the current food deserts in the low-income Englewood neighborhood, conducting restorative justice efforts around peer-juries in high schools, and holding workshops on the school-to-prison pipeline. They also collaborated with other youth groups to introduce the Chicago Safety Act, which Rivera said “would allow for more transparency around detentions, expulsions and suspensions in Chicago public schools.”

The event was sponsored by the Crossroads Fund.

Protestors gather on the 70th anniversary of the first controlled nuclear reaction near the site where it occurred on the University of Chicago campus on Dec. 2, 2012. Photo by Tyreshia Black.

The abstract sculpture by Henry Moore on the University of Chicago campus looks like a soldier’s helmet or maybe a mushroom cloud or a skull. It was created to mark the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, which was done at the university on Dec. 2, 1942. Exactly 70 years later, on Dec. 2, 2012, many people came out to pay their respects at a conference at the University of Chicago.

But there certainly were not as many people as should have come, given what nuclear reactions have meant for our society. Many people were not even aware of the event or the history behind it. I personally never knew of the historical event until I attended the commemoration at the university. Luckily, I had a chance to meet several activists who gave me insight on what is going on and their concerns about nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Urban Youth International Journalism Program students Tyreshia Black and Jaylen Miller interview anti-nuclear activists.

Nuclear power does not release carbon dioxide causing global warming but there are serious environmental, financial and social impacts of nuclear energy. Mining uranium for reactors causes radioactive waste, especially on Native American land. Accidents at nuclear reactors like the Fukushima plant in Japan can be devastating. Nuclear power creates radioactive waste which we do not know how to store. And used fuel from nuclear power plants is used for making nuclear bombs.

I met up with Leona Morgan, a Native American activist from the Navajo tribe, and Robert Chavez, a 19-year-old youth coordinator for Honor Our Pueblo Existence and Think Outside the Bomb in New Mexico. These two really want to make people aware of the dangers we have with the nuclear power and weapons industries. They both have had personal experiences throughout their lives dealing with uranium mining, which provides the raw material for nuclear reactions and nuclear weapons factories and testing.

“I work with uranium issues and some of my family died from reproductive issues, which can be caused by radiation from uranium,” said Morgan, who really wants to let it be known that she is against nuclear power and nuclear weapons. “I grew up in a place contaminated with uranium and I never knew about it until after college.”

Chavez recited numerous facts about nuclear issues by memory. He lives near Los Alamos, a government-owned nuclear research and production laboratory, and said there is always a smell in the air that never seems to leave. “It’s like pure waste always seeming to be inhaled by the innocent,” Chavez said. He also explained several other details to me about toxic nuclear waste.

“Plutonium has a half-life of 20,000 years. Think of how that could harm future generations,” he said.

I asked Morgan and Chavez what could be done to get the younger generation informed about the situation.

“Talk to your friends and create a class presentation,” said Morgan. “Just try to encourage them to encourage others.”

“Use social media,” added Chavez. “Share articles and videos of what you know so they’ll also know. Don’t be afraid to expose the truth. If you know something, say something.”

I also met Kendra Ulrich from Friends of the Earth. Ulrich is the coordinator for the Safe and Green Campaign, which was created to shut down the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor. Ulrich was raised in Ohio and started a lot of her activism there. I was curious what she thought about youth not knowing about nuclear power plants and waste.

“In Vermont and Massachusetts, there are a lot of young people” who know about the issues, she said. “It’s not that young people don’t care, it’s just that they don’t know. They might assume things and not know the truth.”

“If people don’t know, they won’t act,” she added.

Ulrich had been focused on Vermont but Illinois has some work to do around nuclear reactors too. Illinois has the most nuclear reactors in the country, with 11 operating and three closed, according to the Nuclear Energy Information Service. Some of the reactors have a history of serious problems. According to the NEIS: “Illinois reactors have been fined by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over 100 times, for nearly $8.5 million for violations of federal regulations and poor operating practices.”

And accidents anywhere affect the whole nuclear power industry. According to the NEIS: “In case of a serious nuclear power accident anywhere in the U.S., Illinois reactors could be assessed as much as $140 million a year for seven years to finance resulting liability payments.”

Currently, nuclear waste is stored on-site at reactors. But once it is moved to a central storage site as planned, trucks and trains could be going through Chicago carrying nuclear waste. Illinois produces more high-level nuclear waste than any other state each year, according to NEIS.

Before the University of Chicago event ended, everybody went outdoors and walked toward the Moore statue. We said prayers, lit candles and rotated around the statute while joining hands. After releasing hands, Chavez made the last remark. “Even when you are scared to tell what you know, just say it because what you know and tell will always help others,” he said.

A protestor in the Lathrop Homes objects to all three redevelopment ideas proposed by the Chicago Housing Authority Nov. 15. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte.

Tenants and their advocates protested the Chicago Housing Authority’s redevelopment plans for the Lathrop Homes public housing site on the North Side, which is slated for demolition and replacement by a mixed-income community consisting of an array of for-sale, affordable rental and public housing apartments.
On Nov. 15, CHA held an open house inside the New Life Community Church, 2958 N. Damen Ave., to present three concepts for the Lathrop redevelopment and pose questions to Lathrop Community Partners, the development team selected to help revitalize the 32-acre public housing site that was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.
But outside the church, members of the Lathrop Leadership Team – composed of tenants and their advocates – declared that developer’s plans “three dense scenarios, and one destructive idea.” Some of the protestors held signs ridiculing the three concepts; one sign featured a picture of the Three Stooges television characters, to whom the three concepts were compared.

Speakers at the protestors’ press conference complained that the level of community involvement in the developer’s three scenarios did not fulfill CHA’s promise of an “engaged community process.” One speaker noted that the agency pledged to hold “public design charettes” but then scrapped this process later.
Miguel Suarez, a tenant of Lathrop for over two decades and chairman of the Lathrop Leadership Team, told me after the press conference that his members, including some other tenants, are against all three proposed plan scenarios. Suarez objected to the relatively small number of units for public housing tenants, 400 out of a total of 1,200 units, as well as the idea of building a high-rise building as part of the development, which he described as “crazy.”
“If the city and the CHA has spoken against high-rises for many other reasons,” Suarez asked, “why are they proposing high rises now?
“They did not include the community and its wrong. We are rejecting all three scenarios.”
Interviewed before the press conference, Mary Thomas, a nine year tenant of Lathrop, said she didn’t like the plans, which she called a “Pony and Dog Show.”
Thomas was particularly upset with what she described as a lack of any public participation in the planning process with the remaining tenants at Lathrop, where over 700 of the 925 total number of public housing units are vacant.
“They keeping claiming that they did it with us, and it’s a lie,” Thomas said, “They’re being deceptive and I don’t like it, period.”
Thomas, who lives at Lathrop with her last minor child, added that she will never trust what the CHA and their redevelopment team says to her about redevelopment and her relocation when the times comes for her to move.
“They’ve been too deceptive thus far in keeping promises to us,” she said.
Outline of Three Site Plan Concepts for Lathrop
The developer’s concepts differ in the amount of existing buildings they are willing to re-use and in how many taller buildings they will build to reach the 1,200 units they intend to build on the site.
The Riverworks Concept would “reuse…the historic buildings and unique architectural styles of the 1930s building stock.” It would add two residential towers, six improved pedestrian paths and three new east-west streets as well as a neighborhood retail “Main Street.”
The Gateways Concept emphasizes the use of existing building through additions and would build one 28-story residential tower, a new street running north and south and a new neighborhood retail zone.
The Greenscapes Concept includes redevelopment of the site with limited reuse of the existing buildings, the creation of a park featuring the Chicago River, and low- to mid-rise buildings throughout the site with no building taller than the existing 8-story CHA senior building located to the south of the public housing site.
Protesters speaking at their press conference outside the church said they rejected all three plan concepts because they “imposed high-density development that would tower over the neighborhood, create traffic gridlock, burden local taxpayers and bring an excess of risky market rate development into the area.”
None of the three plan ideas would preserve enough of Lathrop’s historic buildings to utilize federal Historic Rehab Tax Credits, which the protesters claim could “provide tens of millions of dollars for the revitalization of Lathrop.

Aldermen’s Concerns
The three site plans for Lathrop did not impress Alderman Proco Joe Moreno (1) either, who represents the majority of tenants there.
In his e-blast on Nov. 14, Moreno said he “does not believe that any of the individual scenarios on the table are an acceptable plan to move Lathrop Homes forward.”
Moreno recently sent a letter to CHA officials stating his concerns.
“The different scenarios each have positive aspects, but all involved must be open to alternative ideas and plans that exist outside of the confines of these three scenarios. The open houses this week should be the beginning of this conversation,” Moreno stated.
Additionally, Moreno stated in the email that “the residents’ desires for the site” were his “primary focus,” adding that he was committed “to ensure that no current residents of Lathrop are displaced during the redevelopment stage(s).”
Summarizing the three proposals, Ald. Scott Waguespack (32) stated in a Nov. 9 letter to CHA CEO Charles Woodyard that after “a thorough review” of the three  proposals, he “concluded that they are lacking in several key respects, including: excessive and unprecedented density. Lack of meaningful public participation in the planning process. Failure of any scenario to preserve the historic character of the site, and failure to meet CHA’s goal of LEED ND platinum or gold certification.”
“I will not accept the premise that revitalization of Lathrop Homes should be accomplished primarily through excessively dense high-rise residential development, regardless of whether these units are market rater or affordable,” Waguespack wrote. “This approach is fundamentally flawed because it attempts to solve one problem, segregated public housing, by replacing it with another equally damaging problem, excessive density. In so doing, LCP demonstrates a lack of concern for the implications of the plan for Lathrop on the long term health and vitality of the surrounding neighborhoods.”
CHA’s Response
James Isaacs, CHA’s Director of Real Estate Development, said during an interview in the open house that the proposal for high-rises was just another housing option for residents to choose from.
“We always believe in providing a range of housing opportunities for our residents,” Isaacs said. “Not everybody likes living in a low-rise building. So, we’re looking at different ways to provide different kinds of housing opportunities for residents,” Isaacs said.
Regarding tenants’ concerns about the large number of vacant units at Lathrop, CHA spokesperson Wendy Parks said during an interview in the open house that “many of those units are severely deteriorated” and it wouldn’t be right for the CHA to allow anyone to live there.
“We have to ensure that all of our units are safe, reliable and vibrant for the community. So we cannot put anyone, I don’t care who it is, in a unit that is deteriorating,” Parks said.
The Developer’s Response
A total of 1,600 units are projected for redevelopment of Lathrop, which consists of 800 for-sale, 400 affordable rentals, and 400 public housing units.
During the open house, Residents’ Journal asked Kerry Dickson, a representative of Lathrop Community Partners, the development team chosen in 2010, why twice as many for-sale units were being proposed for Lathrop as compared with public housing units?
“It’s the development team’s opinion that this is in the best income mix to create a successful mixed-income community,” he said.
Following the initial open house, CHA and Lathrop Community Partners said they intend to use the community’s input to inform and refine a “second generation” of plans for Lathrop and then present them at a community meeting slated for spring 2013 to work, according to Dickson.

Dvorak Park is a very grassy, wide expanse of trees and benches, a playground for young children with an outdoor pool located in the Pilsen neighborhood, which is home to many Mexican immigrants. Rising above the park is the tall, light-colored brick smokestack of the Fisk coal power plant. Next to the smokestack is the red brick building where coal was burned to produce electricity for 109 years.
Since 1903, the plant has provided power for Chicago. And for many years, it was the number one source of pollution in the city, according to reports in the Chicago Tribune.
Jerry Mead-Lucero is a founding member and organizer of the group Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reformation Organization (PERRO). We met with Mead-Lucero in August 2012 on the day after the Fisk power plant had been closed and the Crawford coal-burning power plant a few miles away in the Little Village neighborhood was scheduled to close the next week.
There have been 55 premature deaths each year linked to the power plant, along with hundreds of asthma attacks and people hospitalized because of pollution from the plant, according to a study by a scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2001. Respiratory issues are frequently caused by coal, fly ash, soot, mercury, lead (which is a neurotoxin) and other particles emitted from the coal plant, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Mead-Lucero said the coal plant closing is a big victory for the community but they are still going to keep fighting for a cleaner and healthier neighborhood.
Now PERRO’s challenge is to make sure the site is cleaned up and re-used in a way that is good for the community.
“There’s a question of what to do with the property, the next redevelopment,” Mead-Lucero said. “It’s located near green space. These are industrial and commercial properties, so not all of it will be redeveloped.”
Watching what happens to the site is especially important since the neighborhood is a working class, mostly Latino/Mexican immigrant neighborhood that has been experiencing gentrification. They want to make sure the redevelopment of the site doesn’t contribute more to gentrification.
They also want to make sure the plant doesn’t pose any more health risks. The plant has asbestos in the buildings, according to Mead-Lucero, which needs to be removed before tearing the buildings down.
Mead-Lucero said that the fight against the power plant is an example of the topic of environmental justice, and the fact that it was causing pollution in the working class Latino/Mexican immigrant community is an example of racism and discrimination based on class. PERRO is also still involved in fighting other polluters in the neighborhood.
The H. Kramer Company is a lead smelter near the power plant. PERRO has been fighting for many years to get the company to clean up. Because of PERRO’s efforts, they have started to decorate and plant flowers now. PERRO also did testing of the soil and found lead in it at high levels. H. Kramer was sued and required to reduce pollution. Tests by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency also found high levels of lead in the air nearby and the agency required company to make $8,000 worth of improvements.
Another of PERRO’s efforts is a small park and garden called the Mary Zepeda Native Garden located in the Pilsen neighborhood on 17th and Loomis streets. The garden, created on an unused lot, consists of a mural and a fence that were both painted by a local artist named Hector Duarte and local students. The mural shows the Fisk coal plant with butterflies flying around it. The garden was also filled with native plants including milkweed, monarch butterflies, sunflowers and bees. There’s a gardening group that keeps the garden in good shape. The Mary Zepeda Garden is used as an area to educate people on the environment and is a place where young children can play and be safe.
The Fisk plant, H. Kramer and the Zepeda Garden show that when people come together around a common issue, they can really have the power to make positive changes.

Eco Youth Reporters Jasmine Hunt and David Cal interview a passerby at Harry Palmisano Park. Photo by Kari Lydersen.

Editor’s Note: The following story was written by a student in our Eco Youth Reporters program, conducted in conjunction with award-winning journalist Kari Lydersen and Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. The Eco Youth Reporters program is generously funded by the McCormick Foundation:

The Bridgeport and Pilsen neighborhoods on Chicago’s Near South Side are heavily industrial, with factories, highways, railroad tracks and warehouses. The area used to be famous for the stockyards and slaughterhouses depicted in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Bubbly Creek, which runs through the area, got its name from the decomposing bodies of animals from the slaughterhouses.
But in the middle of all this industry there are pockets of nature where people enjoy the outdoors.
On Halsted Street in the Bridgeport neighborhood – home of Mayors Richard M. and his father Richard J. Daley – Henry C. Palmisano Nature Park is an oasis created on a former limestone quarry and landfill. To the north you can see the smokestack of the Fisk coal-burning power plant, which closed down this year. When you enter the park from Halsted, you see limestone boulders where fossils are located. There are also native plants with deep roots that hold large amounts of water in the soil. During rain storms the native plants hold the water and prevent it from flooding or contaminating other areas. A drain pipe sends storm water into a wetland in the park, where the plants clean the water as it filters through. Metal stairs align parts of the park near a pond created by part of the quarry with steep walls. Rabbits and monarchs inhabit the park. Attention-grabbing graffiti on a park wall proclaims “I Love you! Don’t you ever question that” with a big painted heart.Jose Perez visits the park every week and his son likes to swim in the pond. On a hot summer afternoon, Perez was jogging with his shirt off.
Meanwhile Tim Hong, 57, an interpreter, said he “often comes to park for peace and quiet and stability” in the summer; he doesn’t visit in the winter. He added that “the park is good for people to enjoy nature, which is not easy to find in the city.” He has been visiting the park for three years now. He remembers how “there was construction and 10 months later, the pond was full of ducks, blue gill, rabbits, lots of fish, turtles and badgers.”
About a mile west of Palmisano Park is Canal Origin Park, just off Ashland Avenue around 27th Street, at the confluence of the Chicago River and the historic I&M Canal and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. This is also a place where people fish and enjoy nature in the middle of the city. For a century these Chicago waterways moved goods in and out of the city. The waterway also transmits Chicago’s treated sewage down to the Mississippi River and allows invasive Asian carp to travel toward Lake Michigan. On the west side of Ashland there’s concrete path along the Sanitary and Ship Canal, where people ride their bikes, exercise and fish. It is decorated with weeping willows with long branches and leaves almost touching the ground – representing tears. A dead fish floated on the water below the trail.
Across the canal from the trail is an old abandoned grain elevator covered with graffiti, which people sometimes occupy. It makes you think about the employees who used to work in these dangerous conditions.
On the east side of Ashland, plaques describe the history of the canal. Nearby, Sheryl King, 58 and retired, was fishing on the canal with her son. Under the water you could see green scum and strands of algae.
King has been visiting the park for several years. She said the best fishing time is around 8am to 9am and no later than 11am; or 4pm in the afternoon. She only fishes in certain parts of the river and Canal Origin Park is her usual spot. She fishes for blue gills and other fish. When asked about the fish quality, she said “certain catfish are questionable.” She sometimes sees snakes there also.
The Chicago River and parks like Palmisano offer many historic and enjoyable activities for Chicagoans. But to enjoy these places, the river and the air must be clean and protected. Both parks we visited are examples of how these few natural areas in the middle of the city can be preserved and enjoyed.

Eco Youth Reporters Jaylen Miller and Tyreshia Black interview fishermen on the Chicago River. Photo by Kari Lydersen.

UYIJP participant Tyreshia Black interviews Chicago teacher Cynthia Smith at a Nov. 2 sit in against school closings. Photo by Kari Lydersen.

Editor’s Note: The following story was written by a student in our Urban Youth International Journalism Program, which is generously funded by the McCormick Foundation.

Teachers, students and many concerned local residents gathered at a rally at City Hall in front of the office of Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Nov. 2 yelling out chants like, “We’re fired up, can’t take it no more” and “Na na na na, hey hey hey, stop closing schools.”
Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey, who I interviewed, proclaimed that he was putting those who are causing problems “on notice.” Sharkey meant that those who are making the choice to close schools and lay off teachers and – in his view – deny children the best education will have to face him and many others.
There has been much controversy and protest around Chicago public schools since the Chicago Board of Education, the Mayor’s office and other officials reportedly plan to close about 100 more Chicago public schools that are labeled as under-performing or under-enrolled. Already, many schools have been closed. The Board of Education was supposed to release its list of schools to close on Dec. 1, although the new schools CEO Barbara Bennett-Byrd successfully asked the state legislature for a few more months to make the decision. Meanwhile, parents, teachers and students at the protest said that no public schools should be closed at all.

CTU vice president Jesse Sharkey talks with youth reporter David Cal. Photo by Tyreshia Black.

Sharkey has been a teacher for 11 years at Senn High School on the North Side. He seemed very upset about the closings of schools and he has some first-hand experience because Senn was transformed into a military school against the protests of many students and teachers. “The experience of being told by the district that your school is going to close is completely demoralizing,” said Sharkey.
Many people agree with him.
People like Cynthia Smith, who is a teacher for special needs students at Lane Tech High School. Smith was one of the people shouting the loudest at the City Hall sit-in. “I’ve been to about every rally and it is evident that the neighborhood schools are one of the pillars of the neighborhood,” Smith said. She was a true trooper, showing great physical and mental energy throughout the sit-in.
“I want to stress that all neighborhoods and every single kid in this city deserves to be treated equitably,” she said. “Our students know that this Board is committing a crime by continually depriving ‘certain’ neighborhoods because of a lack of adequate funding.”
Smith wouldn’t let anyone stop her from talking about what she saw as right. “We will make it change, we will make it happen, the people will unite, the people will right the injustices they are trying to impose on us,” she said.
Fortunately, I had another chance to interview the busy Sharkey later in the sit-in. He shared some vital and shocking information with me. “The Board started closing schools in 1977,” he said. “They’ve closed about 150 schools and now there are about three times as many schools on probation (at risk for closing) than there were 15 years ago.”
Sharkey had it engraved in his mind that he, parents, students and teachers would stop schools from closing.
“The people who close schools look at schools like a chess board of little pieces but one move can change the game,” he said.
The protest was organized by the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) and the group Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP). Members from both organizations helped form peace circles and sung call and response songs like “We Shall Not Be Moved.” People were even outside City Hall singing songs like “Won’t Let Nobody Turn Me Around.” Parents among the protestors said they were enraged and anxious about where they would send their children if their schools were closed. Students who were there voiced concern about their futures, possibly without their schools, not knowing how long it would take them to get back on track.
City Hall closed for the evening and protesters could not use the bathrooms. But some of the protesters stayed on for hours more in an act of civil disobedience. Finally around 10 p.m., 10 people were arrested. Like Sharkey, Smith and the others who showed, they vowed not to give up.

The protestors included both teachers and their students. Photo by Tyreshia Black.

Anti-poverty activist and scholar Peter Edelman during a recent lecture at Northwestern University Law School sponsored by the National Public Housing Museum. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte.

It will take “a national groundswell of concern if we are going to make the progress we need on poverty,” said Georgetown Law Center Professor and author Peter Edelman during a lecture hosted by the National Public Housing Museum at Northwestern University Law School, 375 E. Chicago Ave., on October 10. Discussing the “growing chasm between America’s wealthy and poor,” Edelman said that “America has the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world,” with 46 million people living below the poverty line, a situation that could cause problems in the future. “Our democracy is in danger,” he said.
Edelman, faculty director at the Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy in Washington, D.C., is an antipoverty advocate and former legislative aide to U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy who served as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services under the Clinton administration but resigned from his position to protest President Clinton’s support of welfare reform. The free public lecture, based on Edleman’s latest book, “So Rich, So Poor: Why it’s So Hard to End Poverty in America,” was part of the National Public Housing Museum’s “Profiles in Color: Race, Place and Identity Series” funded by the Ford Foundation and the Boeing company.

Peter Edelman being interviewed by National Public Housing Museum CEO Keith Magee. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte.

Before a packed audience in the law school’s Throne Auditorium, Edleman declared that people needing assistance can no longer depend on the federal government assistance to pay their rent and utility bills. “We have become a low-wage nation, our safety net has big holes, and we are not investing wisely enough in our children to prepare them for the jobs of the 21st Century.” Cuts to social services have trapped families in a cycle of poverty and “There isn’t any welfare to get rid of anymore,” Edelman said, adding that “We need to end the cradle to nowhere pipeline.”
While talking about government policies that he blamed for the increasing number of poor and impoverished citizens, Edelman said that the nation is losing “large numbers of disconnected youth,” mainly people of color in inner-city communities. Nevertheless, he added that the majority of people living in poverty were white.
Edelman said the late 1960s were “optimistic times” when enough progress was made with the food stamp program, the earned income and child tax credits and public housing to where people thought poverty would be eradicated by the early 1970s. Instead, he said the opposite has happened and since then, “Children have become the poorest age group in our country.”
Edelman said that 50 percent of the income of those in poverty comes from working wages, especially for mothers with children. “As a result of globalization, of de-industrialization, we’ve become this low-wage nation,” Edelman said, citing statistics that half the jobs in the United States pay less than $34,000 while a quarter of the jobs pay less than what it would take to raise a family of four above the poverty line.
Contrary to belief, Edelman said that President Barack Obama has done a lot for the poor, including reforming the student loan program, adding 16 million more people as educators as a result of the Affordable Care Act, and for the establishment of the “very expensive” and “controversial” Recovery Act, federal stimulus legislation that Edelman said “helped low-income people race to the top.”
Speaking in the weeks before the election, Edelman said, “You don’t hear about it much in the campaign, and that’s totally understandable. Certainly frustrating but, speaking for myself I’d like to see him re-elected,” he said to the delight of the audience.
“But with that said, we’re really in a position here we need to get this question of low-wage work on the table. And talk about what we need to do as a country.”
During the question and answer period with Edelman, a member of the audience said more needed to be done to reach the “hearts” of wealthier Americans to consider the plight of the poor.
Edelman answered that to get more wealthy citizens engaged, more news on poverty needs to appear in the mainstream media and that other factors were important, including “stronger worker unions (and) better organization strategies for low-wage workers by international unions such as the SEIU (Service Employees International Union).” He also endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act “so that there would be a fair shake for unions in the regulatory process for collective bargaining and on fair labor practices.”
Edelman added, “We should be raising the minimum wage. All of the kinds of things that should be there as part of a just society should be in place.”
In answer to a question from Keith L. Magee, executive officer of the National Public Housing Museum, Edelman said America has the highest child poverty rate in the industrialized world, a situation that he predicted will cause problems down the road. “We’re going to have what we have now,” he said, “You’re going to have a whole population that’s left behind.”