Missing Whitney Young student

Today's Sun-Times has a very sad story about a young man from the neighborhood who vanished without a trace last week. Fr. Ed Shea led a prayer vigil for him. It sounds like he's been gone for about a week. He was a quiet kid who just got accepted to UIC. Let's hope he comes home and becomes the only one of the family's six children to graduate from high school. He is the youngest in the family and everyone's hopes were on him to make it.

New Tenant

I don't think I've written much about my new tenant. We'll call him Alex, which will be the first tropical storm of the 2010 season. This seems appropriate as he's not very tempestuous now, but I wonder what he could grow into.

Alex is an engineer from Guanajuato, Mexico, turned third grade teacher. He likes to play soccer in his spare time and celebrated rather heavily when his team won the league championship, arriving home at 5:30 a.m. Good thing I was getting up early. He is very neat and quiet otherwise. So far, so good, and a welcome change from Hurricane Alberto, especially in the neat department. Now I'm the house slob, a position I much prefer. Any house is in trouble if I'm the neatest person in it.

Dawn Makes Hollandaise Sauce

Tonight Dawn called around 8:30 asking if I had any white wine in the house. She was making Hollandaise sauce to put on broccoli. She tried at her internship--a cooking class at Washburne Culinary Institute--and wanted to try making it at home.

I was out of wine. So I walked up to the corner liquor store on 47th and braved the scary clientele to find a bottle of California Chardonnay and bring it back. Yup-yup tried to sell me a wheelie backpack but I have one already. When I got to their house, Dawn's little cousins were playing in the front yard with Diana. Marisa, Adriana and Dawn were in the kitchen. They were teasing Dawn about how long her project was taking.

"She's been cooking three hours already," Marisa told me.

"She can't work in a restaurant yet," I teased.

She gets a copy of the new edition of the Culinary Institute of America's textbook, The Professional Chef. It's gorgeous! Marisa was copying recipes when I got there and asked me to help translate them. After a couple of hilarious minutes of me miming dicing and slicing, I went home and got my dictionary to advance the effort.

Then we got into a big discussion of what is basil, what are peppercorns, and what are shallots. I actually had some of all these things back at my house, and Dawn needed the whole pepper and shallots for the sauce, so I went home for them, too. Some days it's good to be a yuppie--how many people on this block have shallots in their house, I wondered.

While we were watching Dawn boil water and stir sauce endlessly, Marisa asked me if I believe in extraterrestrials. I said, "Sure. The universe is really big. We can't be the only people in it, right?"

Then she asked if I'd ever seen any and I said no. Adriana said she saw some unusual lights once--somewhere between Zacatecas and Ciudad Juarez, I think she said. Then Julian Sr. came in with his hands all silvery-grey from working. "See, here's an alien," I teased. Marisa cracked up.

Julian washed off, picked up his youngest son and got in a little weightlifting with him. I'm worried about the guy. Things at his factory sound difficult--a new boss is cutting wages and raising hours. It may be time for the workers to rise up again out there.

Dawn's Hollandaise came out a bit thicker than the CIA's would have been, I think, but it was still mighty tasty. There were a few substitutions--hot sauce for cayenne pepper (easy), lime for lemon. Mexican Hollandaise. We had it with broccoli. Dawn gave her brother Joey a little on her finger to try. He tasted it, made a face and ran. "He's teasing me!" she complained.

Her big brother, Junior wouldn't even go there. "I'm OK," he said. I laughed at him.

All of us females over age 10 in the house chowed down on it, though.

Curie Youth Radio on McKinley Park

Though Marshfield Tattler's world is a little south of McKinley Park--it's the nice big park people here go to to get out of the hood, if they're not going to the lake--this morning Curie Youth Radio has a piece on WBEZ's 848. It tells a story about an experience all too commonly faced by young men in my neighborhood. They're minding their own business when a bunch of gangbangers show up. Check it out.

Dawn Helps Win a Grant

Congratulations to Dawn and her friends at Big Picture, who wrote a grant to Mikva Challenge asking for money to expand Big Picture's after-school program. Currently, Teatro Vista has been doing after-school theater workshops for Big Picture students. With the Mikva grant, they will be able to add art and sports, and invite more students from other schools. They titled the program "Crossing Boundaries" because part of the point is for young people from different neighborhoods and different turf to have safe common space.

Go Dawn!

Girls Night In

I took a break from writing this evening and went next door. Julian and his friend and his friend's girlfriend were hanging on the front doorstep. "Are you looking for my family?" Julian inquired.

"I was coming to talk to your mom."

"They're all at Marisa's with the new baby." I thought he meant his new cousin. I hung out with them for a while. Yup-yup was just being really loud, running around hollering. "We have a rooster on the block," I said. Julian's buddy Santiago cracked up.

"Be safe," Julian warned as I was about to walk down the block.

"Don't worry," I said, "I'll yell 'Yup-yup' real loud if I get in trouble."

Over at Marisa's it was girls' night in with the wee ones. Marisa has a buddy, Yadith, who has a little teeny girl, probably younger than Julian's baby brother, who was there with Dawn and her mom.

Marisa's daughter Diana is three and always has a lot to say to me. "Hi, Maritza!"
"Hi, Diana."

This can go on for about a dozen times. Diana spent her first year of life with her English-speaking auntie, so she speaks much more English than the average three-year-old. But she switches back and forth in ways I don't always expect, so sometimes we just talk past each other. She's a total ham--she was dancing for us and doing quite a few theatrical moves, looking especially tragic when I said I was leaving, etc.

Dawn's mom, Adriana, is game to go get a San Miguel application on Friday morning. She said the school hasn't called her about Julian. Some scary stuff happened on Monday, but I'll save it for another post.

Probably the funniest moment was when Adriana asked Marisa and Yadith how old they are. Yadith is 19 and Marisa is 22. Then we were talking about birthdays and when is everybody's. I suppose I'll have to throw my could-be-annual Memorial/Birth Day BBQ. I know Adriana is in her late 30s, so I couldn't resist pointing out:

"Voy a tener quarenta anos. Soy la vieja en este grupo"/"I'm going to be forty. I'm the old lady in this group," I said, which got a big laugh out of all of them.

Adriana, holding her youngest son on her lap, pointed to Marisa and Yadith with their girls. "Senora, senora," she said, then pointed to herself. "Senora."

More laughing as she and I pointed to Dawn and myself and said in the same breath, "Muchachas, muchachas." I heard somebody say, "Muchachitas" (little girls).

It's a trip being a spinster down here. But I forget if I said this before--a while back Dawn was over here and told me she and her mom were talking about me. "We were talking about the fact that you have your own house and you are out on your own. That is amazing!" she said. Dawn has said she'd like to have her own house and travel, like me. That's also amazing.

New Blog: City on the Make

For all the new fans I've picked up since I started blogging about Big Picture, here's a new blog for you to hear about city and school skulduggery: City on the Make

The second most recent post is an interesting and plausible theory about the LSC president at Curie High School, which has been in the news lately over the LSC's decision not to renew the principal's contract.

Birdwatching at Sherman Park

Dawn and I went to Sherman Park after school let out today. I was taking a break from housecleaning and freelance work, and stopped to talk to her mom. She told me Dawn cut school this morning to take a walk. She was home and wanted to go ouside Her mother asked if I would mind if she came with me. Of course I didn't mind, so out she came, still a little red-faced from crying.

We stopped by Su Casa and then went all the way over to Sherman Elementary at 51st and Morgan because I wanted to know what it looked like. They have a nice new playground--some kids were hanging around after school playing on it. Some of the kids sounded very rough--there was a lot of really foul cursing among kids who looked to be between eight and 10 years old. "Those teachers have their work cut out for them," I said to Dawn.

After we walked for a while and talked about nothing important, I asked what happened today. It was really what happened over the weekend--more struggles about free time and independence with her parents. I think she just felt trapped and decided to take a walk when she could take one more easily than she had over the weekend. It was also clear she felt like she was on top of her schoolwork--I didn't even try to take that one on right now. But she felt bad and was worrying that this would all hook back into problems last summer. We talked, walked around, got to the park, talked. Shortly after we got into the park itself, I stopped and looked at her and said, "I think maybe the most important thing here is that you forgive yourself for what happened last summer and let go of it. If you really believe that you have a clean slate, that might change things."

I saw in her face that she got what I was saying. I hope that sticks.

We saw quite a few interesting birds. Three red-winged blackbirds, who stood out strongly against the cattails and tall grass. And we saw parakeets! Apparently some have moved west of Jackson Park--we spotted three large nests, one with seven or eight squawking about. There was only one pair of mallards. Dawn was interested to know the male is the pretty one and mallard ducks mate for life. We also saw a male and female cardinal--another pair where the male gets the pretty colors. But Dawn asked me how to tell the difference between a male and a female Canada goose and I was stumped! If you know, please comment.

Big Picture Launches Website

Big Picture Back of the Yards has launched its own web site, which includes student comments about the school. Some of these comments are from students you've met on this blog, so check it out.

In other Big Picture news, I heard from a principal at another CPS small school that Big Picture led the small high schools in math gains! I'm hoping to get the data and post it here in future.

More Big Picture News

The Big Picture High School is making a new round of headlines. Well-known educator Greg Michie has an op-ed in today's Sun-Times. Like me, Greg acknowledges the school has room to improve, but is making strides and is performing better than other local schools on the key measures of attendance and dropout rates.

The February issue of Catalyst Chicago looks at Big Picture as a case study in what a district shouldn't do once it has agreed to give a school autonomy.

Meanwhile, students and parents have begun a process of enlisting local political support to keep the school open. We'll see if it pays off at the February board meeting.

Cranium Challenge

A few nights ago, the three boys from across the street came over for some chili and a game of Cranium. They had never played it before, but they were game to give it a go. Our contestants were:

Junior: now in 6th grade, a sweetie pie of a kid who had some kind of health problem as a young child and is in special education. He's made a lot of progress in math in the last year--I remember him strugging with his times tables and addition/subtraction facts, but now he's doing simple long division problems pretty successfully.

Omar: Junior's little brother, who was in kindergarten when I met him, which means he's in second grade now. He is one of those kids who will say or ask you whatever pops in their heads, which can be funny, and he has more of a temper than his big brother does.

Martin: now in 7th grade. He's very smart--we read most of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime together when I first moved here. He shot up like a weed over the summer and has a hint of a mustache. He and Junior are good buddies, which I find charming.

If you've ever played Cranium, you know that its pop culture references are not likely to register with the under 18 set. I tried to sing like Barbara Steisand, but since they didn't know the song "People," it was to no effect. "She's an old white lady--even older than me!" I told them. Tina Turner was no better, and the only songs of hers I could remember were "Proud Mary" and "Private Dancer." Not wanting to sing the latter for a bunch of preteen boys, I took off my glasses and shook my hair frantically while singing "Proud Mary keep on burning...Rolling..Rolling...Rolling on the river!" This made them laugh but they thought maybe she was related to Timmy Turner of The Fairly Odd Parents, which I had never seen.

Junior had better luck than Martin when trying to spell the word "Bazooka" backwards. Martin got him to guess Radiohead by drawing a radio and a head faster than Omar could draw them for me (and his head looked like a flower with eyes, so I was pretty confused.)

I suspect playing this game might be good for their standardized test scores. This is a big year for Martin, because his test scores this spring will decide whether he's eligible to take the selective enrollment exam. "I wanted to go to Whitney Young, but then I found out their mascot is a dolphin," he informed me. "Aren't there any high schools around here I could go to?"

"Stick with Whitney Young," I advised him. "Don't sweat the mascot, and no, there aren't any high schools around here I want you to go to."

Julian Gets Lucky/Big Picture Goes to Church

Well, it looks like Julian got off easy last night. The cops let him go without giving him a court date since they couldn't find any prior record on him. Thank God.

I saw him this morning as I was going to church. He said hi to me, but the walls felt pretty high up.

"Hi, Julian, how are you?" I said. I wasn't clicking into the events of last night. Then it clicked and I said, "You OK?"

He paused for a minute, like he wasn't going to answer, then said, "Yeah."

"All right," I said, with a strong overtone of "we'll talk more later."

The Big Picture gang went to Holy Cross today to elicit community support for the school and get a meeting with Fr. Bruce. It was a busy day at the Holy Cross 10--Willie Cochran, who is challenging indicted Ald. Arenda Troutman for her seat, introduced himself and his family at the end of Mass. But they did give time for a rep from Big Picture to let people know there would be a letter of support for people to sign in the back. Plus, our intrepid voter registrars were out back for the last day of registration before the elections.

After Mass, there was food in the hall, so everybody went over there. I saw Oscar sitting down to a bowl of pozole. He asked about the NHS meeting last week and told me he's pretty free tomorrow, so I'll call him and hopefully we can go talk to Julian's parents.

So I got a lot of food for the Big Picture strategy session for nothing, since most people had eaten in the church hall. But the meeting was very good, and the number in attendance was up I think--from eight last week to 12 this week. They are meeting with Fr. Bruce on Wednesday, we planned some more key people to target and who was going to do what. Watch for stories about the school coming pretty soon in the Chicago Reader and the Tribune.

At the end of the meeting, one of the teachers told me she was very excited that Julian's exhibition last week was a marked improvement over the one before. Hurray!
I went over to their house for a while this evening. He was in the kitchen and I called out, "Hey, Julian, I heard your exhibition last week was really good."

"It was better," he said, "but it was still too short. I'm going to do better this quarter."

I hope so. We're going to talk about electricity this week.

Busy Saturday Night

Lots of people stopped by this evening. Junior and Oscar and their mom, which was nice. We haven't seen each other in too long.

Yup-yup, trying to sell me stuff, which wasn't so nice. I thought I had locked the gate. Maybe I had. I need to ask the people next door to lock theirs, too.

Worst of all, the Chicago Police Department, looking for Julian. He told them he lives here. Ouch. I was afraid there was more to it than that, but apparently he was 'looking suspicious'--out without a coat between here and his buddy's house on the next block up. The cops wanted to know what was up with him and he got scared and cut through my back yard to go home. That got them interested. Now they're waiting out in the alley for his folks to get home. They were going to a baby shower. I called his sister and they are coming back. I told them to call me if they wanted me to come over.

I called the neighborhood youth intervention specialist. Maybe Julian is too small potatoes for him, but I worry that the potato is getting bigger and I don't know how to stop it.

Won a Skirmish in Graffiti Wars

The viaduct at 49th and Marshfield has about three or four layers of paint, thanks to a recent round of graffiti warfare between the Disciples and the Latin Souls. I learned the secret to getting the graffiti removal people out here quickly--always get a reference number. I got one yesterday because the 311 operator inquired if I wanted one, and the graffiti was gone tonight.

Big Picture Goes to Clark Street

Sadly, I was not able to go with them. However, I heard today that two students spoke and that Board of Education officials were pretty vague in their responses. The official word at the meeting, I hear, is that a final decision will not be made for another one to two months.

I hear differently under the table, but will leave it at the official word in hopes that gives everyone some room to maneuver.

Big Picture in the Press

Here's an article generated by Thursday night's event. The Daily Southtown quotes two of my other favorite students, besides Dawn.

There was a small group of parents, students and staff eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking coffee in my kitchen this afternoon while planning the revolution. Stay tuned.

Big Picture, Test Scores, and Life after High School

Someone posted an excellent set of questions and observations about Big Picture and inner-city students recently. It seemed to me worth pulling out of the comment section and putting front and center for discussion. So here is most of what the latest anonymous poster wrote:

But, how do the Big Picture schools explain the very mediocre Explore-PLAN-ACT scores their schools have put up? Doesn't it matter? Are colleges going to welcome the kids with a 13 or 14 without putting them on probation or making them take all those 095 type classes that don't count towards graduation? Over the years I've heard story after story from young people who couldn't make it or got discouraged because of these things making them feel like they weren't good enough.

Despite some of their fierce exteriors, many inner city children are extremely sensitive to intellectual criticism. Many have been told they aren't good enough somewhere else and when they don't make it in college or into college, they're done. They don't want to keep failing and being told they aren't good enough.

Until almost every college and university does away with their current entrance requirements, and figures out how to more fairly gauge student achievement, students everywhere will have to get a decent score on standardized tests. Like it or not.

Let me try to address the first question with the caveat that I am not a Big Picture teacher, administrator or consultant, so my answer is only that of an observer. I don't know how the schools would explain them, but I would explain them by saying that like most inner-city students, these students did not receive the background knowledge as very young children and elementary school students that would make them "good testers." It's hard to make up for that in two to three years of high school.

I can say with authority that Big Picture schools are not the only CPS schools with this problem. Yes, some high schools (a very small handful) are making impressive gains. I think Chicago Academy is one. Many others are not.

Second question: doesn't it matter? Yes, it matters, but is it everything? Is it more important than the difference between earning a high school diploma because you trusted the place enough to stay there and not earning a high school diploma because you didn't? I frankly do not think an ACT score is more important than the million-dollar difference in lifetime earnings between having a high school diploma and not having a high school diploma. In a city where about half the kids don't finish high school, I believe we all have to start with diploma completion when we talk about goals for our kids. (Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I see no sense talking about college without a recognition that completing high school is the necessary prerequisite and an important goal in itself.)

Here is my question back to you, anonymous poster: is closing the school the answer for low ACT scores? Should we should close a school where kids average a 14 and something like 90 percent are on-track to graduate, but leave open a school with an average ACT of 15 but only half the students graduate within five years of entry? That's Big Picture and Richards. If we close them both down, where do the kids go?

Now, to your questions as to whether these students can be admitted to college and if so, won't they be put in remedial courses? Another poster to this site has pointed out that many seniors, some juniors and even a few of the Back of the Yards sophomores are currently enrolled in one or more college courses. I spoke with a senior earlier this week who is taking a regular college course and getting a C at National-Louis. Would I rather he was getting an A? Sure. But he's getting that C now and says he's learning what he needs to do to get a better grade in his next course. That could spare him a lot of heartache freshman year. No, I don't know what his ACT score is, but I assume it is far from off the charts.

As to admissions, most Chicago Public Schools students don't meet the ACT score requirements for most colleges and universities. The CPS average (I think) is still 17.1 or something like that. Roosevelt sets 20 as its benchmark; UIC's average freshman ACT is a 23. So the average kid in CPS is in trouble, not just the Big Picture kids. But some Chicago Public Schools students go despite their scores, sometimes through programs that recruit minority students or students with promise who fall outside the usual admissions guidelines. And what makes the difference between the students who succeed in college and those who fail, as best I can tell, is the successful ones developed habits of persistence and seeking help from others. Those are habits that Big Picture explicitly cultivates in ways most high schools do not. So I think Big Picture students have no worse chance at college success than other kids in the district, and because of the habits of work and mind they are developing, likely better.

I am aware of two charter schools where average ACT scores are low but average rates of college entrance are high: North Lawndale College Prep and Young Women's Leadership Charter School. Both schools put intense effort into the college process and both have developed supports for graduates to stick it out in college through financial and academic difficulties. I don't know how their college completion results are beginning to turn out, but I have hopes for them. I think Big Picture kids deserve the same hopes, which would require keeping the school open and devoting some school resources to postgraduate supports.

Open House Draws a Crowd

There were some interesting outsiders in attendance at tonight's Big Picture Open House: Univision, WBEZ, Catalyst Chicago, Marvin Garcia from Alternative Schools Network, Mike and Susan Klonsky from the Small Schools Workshop, Emilio Carrasquillo, new director of Neighborhood Housing Services for Back of the Yards/Garfield Boulevard, and Jesse Iniguez, candidate for 12th Ward Alderman. Overall, I'd guess between 80 and 100 people showed up.

More importantly, this time parents and teachers were circulating petitions and letters asking CPS to keep the school open. There will be a group going to Wednesday's school board meeting at 125 S. Clark Street. That's not all that lies ahead. It's time to pressure the aldermen, the state reps and every other power point that can be tapped.

I'm worried that now, when people are really ready to try, it may already be too late. But here we go.

Big Picture Open House Jan 18, Part II

At long last, Big Picture Back of the Yards is taking its struggle to survive public and enlisting community support. The open house is intended to show the community what Big Picture students have been doing for the last three and a half years. I'm told there will be a "Take Action" table where people can sign letters to Arne Duncan expressing support for the school.

I'll be there. You interested? Come on out and see for yourself.

Thursday January 18
6 - 8 p.m.
4946 S. Paulina
for more information: 773-535-9219

Student comments from the flyer:
"[At Big Picture] you learn more by doing it, rather than watching and reading a book." --Edgar Tobar

"I do feel like I have more goals now and a future...I just feel like I would end up in a gang if I still went to my old school. I am much better here." --Omar Aguirre

And a quick vignette--Dawn came over this afternoon to work on a report while I was having some people over, including her social studies teacher. Then Julian came looking for her and told me he wants to bring over his essay draft for me to look at tomorrow.

"Don't you want to come in and say hi?" I asked.

Julian looked sheepish. "No, I'm straight," he said. "But tell her I said hi."

Meanwhile, Dawn got cracking and knocked out one essay and started a second one. She was working so hard I sent her back to her house for my spare keys and told her to keep on working while I went out to dinner.

Open House at Big Picture Jan 18

So, I went by Big Picture this afternoon. The teachers were all in a meeting but there were flyers posted on the door and a table of loose ones at the entrance. They are holding an informational open house from 6 to 8 p.m. next Thursday. I wonder who will go? Does this mean they will be able to accept freshmen? Stay tuned.

The San Miguel Visit

Yes, dear readers, after a year of talking this up, I finally got Joey and his mom to go see San Miguel School. The whole project was classic. I went over about 10 to 1 and Joey and two buds of his I didn't know opened the door.

"Is your mom almost ready to go?" I asked. I could hear her in the back with the baby.

"Mommy!" Joey yelled and went back. Rapid Spanish ensued. He came back and told me she needed another 15 minutes.

Mom herself came out of the kitchen and said,"Hola, Maureen. Ahorita." (Hi, Maureen. In a little while.)

"Sure, no problem," I told her.

I came back in half an hour. Joey opened the door again, ran back, and came to the door with the car keys. "She said to warm it up."

"Are you coming?"

"No."

"You sure you don't want to see it?"

"No, it's OK."

I hate wasting gas like that. When I started the car, the gas tank empty light came on. I kept warming up the car because I figured there was probably something I didn't know about why it needed a long warmup time, and I know she likes the car warm (roasting?)for the baby.

Then Mom, baby, Joey and the buddies all piled in. Really, I was glad. I'd rather have more than less of them see the place. We drove over and there was no immediate place to park, so I dropped them all off and found a spot. I only did one bad thing to the minivan when they weren't looking--hit the bottom of the front on the street on the way out a steep driveway.

When I came back, a young graduate who is back doing some service hours and helping out led me up the stairs. Mom and the kids were almost at the top of the third floor.

"Mucho ejersicio," I said. Lots of exercise.

"Doble," she said, referring to carrying the baby. We grinned at each other.

San Miguel only occupies the third floor of the building. Hedges uses the second floor for overflow space. There's a library right next to the office--I think the three boys took a peek in it. There's a lot of religious art--a big mural of Guadalupe on the wall along the stairwell and a little shrine with a statue of St. Francis at the top of the landing. It's bright and airy, even on a cloudy day like today.

The clerk talked to Joey's mom at length. I didn't listen to it carefully, but I was pretty sure it was about money and how to apply. I did hear the clerk explain that how much you pay is based on how much money you have and how large your family is. "No te preocupes," she said kindly. "Don't worry." I wanted her to hear that for herself. I hope it helped.

I held the baby while they talked. A couple of teachers came through and waved and played with him.

Afterwards we took a minute to look at the airplane hanging overhead in the hallway. It's a miniature biplane and it looks like the kids made it. You could see the gas cans strapped to the bottom. The boys were pretty taken with it.

At the end, the director, Mike Anderer, came out and said hi to me. He couldn't place me but then remembered from the Being Peacemakers in Back of the Yards group we had going for the last year or so. He said hi to Joey & company. "Bienvenido. Nos vemos." (Welcome. See you again.)

It turns out applications probably won't be available until March or April. I'm just glad we went.

The funniest part came at the end. When we were leaving the house, I suggested we get gas. Joey's mom was going to go back and get her debit card when I said no, I've got money, let's just go. Then we got to the gas station and I realized I had left my wallet in the house. We both laughed.

Bring your A Game, Arenda

Here's the link to video of a press conference conducted today by Troutman's lawyer. Amazing. "Bring your A game," he warned her challengers, "because Alderman Troutman is back!"

"You're not talking about the Christmas when she brought baskets to the seniors," advised Mary Ellen Barry. (Wow, how old school is that?)

And yes, Arenda speaks for herself a bit. On how she helped Ms. Barry reduce her property taxes. "I have been an upstanding alderman for 17 years," she assures us."The affordable housing legislation that has made this mayor the affordable housing of this nation, I have championed. That legislation is still in play." Please, Arenda. If this is your A Game, you better get back to practice.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0701100130jan10,1,3302018.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Yup-Yup latest

This guy has been ringing my bell so much I have resorted to locking my front gate as soon as I get home at night, just not to be bothered with him. But since my next door neighbors haven't put a doorknob that locks in their gate, nor have they replaced the fence between their yard and mine, Yup-yup can come in through their yard.

He did so just as I was sitting down to dinner. "Miss Maritza, what can I do for you?" he said cheerfully, waving a wooden salad fork and some contraption to dry polished nails, I think.

"How many times do I have to tell you I'm between jobs and I haven't been paid since November!"

"This isn't about money," he said sweetly. "I just want to know what I can do for you." (Yep, he's a pimp, all right. But I am not his ho. Jesus.)

"When I lock the front gate, it means I do not want to be disturbed," I said sternly.

"Oh, I didn't know that," he said, turning to leave immediately. I swear I'm going to start answering the door with the phone in my hand. If it's him I'm just going to call 911. I've had it.

Troutman in Handcuffs!

Well, today's news is full of our neighboring alderman, Arenda Troutman, and her alleged misadventures in bribe-taking. Here's what the state's attorney, Gary Shapiro, had to say about doing business in the 20th Ward:

"You want the alderman's support, you pay your alderman. You pay Arenda Troutman," Shapiro said at a news conference following her initial court appearance at the Dirksen Building Courthouse. (From the Chicago Tribune)

Apparently, the FBI ran a sting operation in which someone posed as a developer asking for her support of a zoning change. Court documents say she agreed to support the proposal in exchange for $5000 cash, a promise of another ten grand, and a $5000 political contribution.

Her campaign billboard down the street reads: "Let the progress begin." That's quite a definition of progress, eh?

This also confirms something I heard months ago from someone who used to work in affordable housing here, but left the neighborhood. "On the near west side, it was tough working with aldermen, but I've never seen anything like this here," my friend told me. I'm paraphrasing the rest of the point, which was basically that aldermen in this neighborhood are much more direct in asking what is in it for them to support a deal. I wondered which aldermen in particular were in this person's mind. Maybe now I know. But I bet Troutman is not alone.

Graffiti Wars Rage On

This morning I was walking up toward the railroad viaduct at 49th and saw new graffiti on top of the fresh white paint that had covered the last round. It appears the GDs and the Latin Souls are conducting graffiti wars on the viaduct, the Atotonilco tortilla factory next to it, and on the building on the northwest corner of Ashland and 50th. I was calling in the viaduct graffiti to 311 when I spotted Fr. Ed Shea walking down the street in his brown Franciscan robes, with one of the steady attenders at the 7:30 a.m. daily Mass. We waved. I've been going to Mass at Holy Cross for months--I felt guilty for not putting in some face time at St. Joe's.

An Open Letter to Arne Duncan

Dear Arne:

Now that the Tribune is reporting your office will decide the fate of Big Picture High School within the month, I feel the need to speak out about the school as a neighbor and a friend of its students and their families. Yes, Big Picture is expensive. Yes, it's an open question how good a job the school is doing getting kids to score high on the almighty PSAE. More importantly, whether students are learning the math they need for college is a very open question. But it is doing something our other neighborhood high school is not doing—getting kids to go to school and keeping those kids in school. The school's annual dropout rate was 6 percent in year one and 5 percent in year two. The annual dropout of its nearest neighbor, Richards High School, was about twice as high in the same period. In 2005 Big Picture had a 93 percent attendance rate, a very strong showing among city high schools. Richards' attendance was 87 percent, one point above the city average but substantially lower than its neighbor.

When Big Picture opened, elementary school counselors here rushed to send them students they feared would not make it in regular high school. As a result, I would bet you dollars to donuts that well over half of the 75 or so students in that school right now would be dropouts today had they started at Richards or any other neighborhood high school. How do you weigh that in a decision to close a school? And while Don Pittman is crying about the expense, the district is happy to run Second Chance alternative high school here in the neighborhood, which serves even fewer kids. Having been an alternative high school teacher I know we need schools like Second Chance, but wouldn't you rather spend that kind of money before the students drop out?

There are plenty more kids growing up here who will need a high school like Big Picture. They will need a place where they know and trust their teachers and classmates, a place where their interests are valued and shape their schoolwork. Despite the best efforts of some people in CPS to destroy what Big Picture schools do to bring student choice into the classroom and build strong relationships between teachers and students, Big Picture at Back of the Yards has done both of those things for most of its students. I know this because I see them on my block and I talk to them, because I work with them on their college essays, because they come over to my house to prepare and rehearse their quarterly exhibitions. With all the weaknesses this school has, it is still a wonderful opportunity for young people who don't get many opportunities handed to them. I hope you will find a way to keep the school open and to give it a real chance to operate as it was designed.

Joey's First El Ride & An Experiment

First thing this morning, Joey and I were going to the zoo today with my friend Ida and her new adopted daughter, but Ida called at the last minute to cancel. Poor Joey had to get out of bed at 8 a.m. for no reason--if it had been up to me we would have left a lot later, and I would have cleaned the house this morning!

However, I still had to run some errands, and Joey still needed a book from the library. So we decided just to go downtown and get the book and come back.

"What time will we be home?" Joey asked me.

"What time do you want to be home?"

"About one."

"Why?" I asked him, expecting to hear he was going to play with his friends.

"I want to work on my report."

Just when I was getting all excited over this amazing display of initiative, he said, "I want my game back." He got a new Nintendo game for Christmas and his mom has taken it away until he gets all his vacation homework done. Go Mom!

So off we went to the library. We got off the bus at the shopping center by Ashland and the river so I could drop off some dry cleaning and get money at the Dominick's. "What is dry cleaning?" Joey asked me.

"It's a cleaning process that uses a lot of chemicals," I told him. "Some kinds of fancy clothes can't be washed in plain water, so they are cleaned this way."

When I walked us to Archer and made to cross the street rather than wait at the bus stop, Joey looked surprised. "Are we taking the train?"

"We sure are," I said.

"I never took the train before." (He's been on the bus, but mostly he rides around in his folks' minivan.)

"Well, we'll go in the first car so you can look out the way the driver does. It's fun."

It was fun. Another train came the opposite way between Ashland and Halsted. "What if it hit us?" Joey asked.

"I don't think they've had too many head-on crashes," I said.

He liked looking at the police headquarters building. We got off at the Library stop and I took us to the post office and Radio Shack before we went to Harold Washington. As we were leaving the post office, going south on Dearborn, Joey noticed a statue on a skyscraper that I'd never seen before. It was a stature that looked like Mary with the infant Jesus on a building I think on Jackson west of Clark. Anybody know what that is?

Joey didn't have any written instructions about this report--whether because he wasn't given any or because he lost them, I don't know. At first I thought it could be any book, so we were trying to track down something on the Great Wall of China, but then he looked up and said:

"I think my teacher said something about it had to be fiction. That's when it's not true, right?"

Yes, indeed, that's when it's not true. So we crossed to the opposite set of stacks in the Thomas Hughes Children's Library, and found the Goosebumps section. Joey picked out one with some scary zombie-like monsters on the cover, dripping mud and snarling.

Then we went to the McDonald's on State Street and he had a Big Mac because yesterday when I thought we were going to the zoo I had said yes he could go to McDonald's for lunch. So I kept my word, even though it was only 11. "I'm full," he said afterwards.

"I'll bet," I said. His mom had made him bacon and pancakes for breakfast, he told me.

When we came home I tried an experiment. I read him the first few chapters and asked a few comprehension questions as we went along. He got most of them and he was cheerfully predicting away--R.L. Stine puts little cliffhangers at the end of every chapter, making it very easy to ask, "What do you think will happen next?"

Then I let him read on his own. "Can I read like this?" he asked, indicating reading aloud under his breath.

"Yes," I said. I don't know what expert opinion is on this, but he clearly needs to do something to help himself decode.

"My dad doesn't let me do that," Joey said. (Dad may be on to something, but I just don't know.)

I went and got myself lunch--I just had some fries and Coke at McDonald's, since I'm in the New Year's phase of trying to whittle my waist and fatten my wallet.

About 20 minutes later, when I came back, Joey had read less than two pages. "So what happened in the story?" I asked him.

He told me the kids were going to do something about making a face to scare the girl they didn't like. (This was inaccurate--they were arguing about putting a rubber snake in her lunch. He seemed to have no clue about the snake.) We talked a little more, and it was clear he had stuck on a phrase where one of the kids had made a face and turned that into a bigger deal than it was.

So I made an executive decision and read him half of the book today. Shoot me, but there was no way in hell he was going to read that book and understand it. His attention was fine--he held up for about two and half hours with just a few short diversions and one bathroom break. I told him to go home and write down what he remembers about the story so far and to draw pictures of some of the main characters. (I don't know what he has to do for this report, but that ought to help him get started.) And I called San Miguel the minute he left. We can go over and visit anytime, they said.

During one of our short conversational diversions, we talked about school. I pointed out the difference between how much he understood when I read to him and how much he was struggling to read the book on his own. "Somebody has to teach you how to read, and I don't know how to do it," I said.

"They can teach me at Chavez," he said stoutly.

(They haven't so far, kid, and you're ten years old, I thought to myself.) "Joey, how many students are in your class?"

"Thirty."

"At San Miguel they have 15 students for each teacher, so that teacher is going to have twice as much time for you," I said.

I'm going over now to talk to his mom about visiting on Friday.

Girls' Day Out

Dawn and I had an afternoon out yesterday. We went to McCormick Place to check out the climbing wall at Mayor Daley's Holiday Sports Fest, or whatever they call the two exhibit halls' worth of athletic extravaganza. The only problem was we left so late that by the time we arrived, they had closed the line for the climbing wall. We got there after 3 and it was closing at 4, so they stopped taking in people an hour early to let the line finish. Too bad.

At least Dawn got to see it. They had pulleys at the top so you didn't have to have another person belay you, which was different from how I learned it when I went in San Francisco with my sister. I'm not sure if this is the exact place we went, but it has cool pictures:

http://www.touchstoneclimbing.com

She thought the rope helped pull you up, so it was a revelation to her that no, you get yourself up. The rope just breaks your fall if you lose your footing.

After watching the climbers on the wall, we went over to watch gymnastics. Dawn was fascinated at the girls doing the vault. Later we watched them do the uneven parallel bars, something I love to watch and wish I could do.
One older blonde girl was chalking her hands. She got on and had a lot of power, flipping between the upper and lower bar.

"Go, Britney!" her teammates called. "Brit, come on, Brit!" She did a flip coming off and only staggered slightly as she landed.

Later, we saw another girl, fully stretched out mid-air, miss grabbing the bar. She fell flat on her chest--thank God her head was still lifted up so she didn't hit her head on the ground. My heart was in my mouth watching her. You don't see stuff like that happen very often when you watch the Olympics.

Once we'd had enough, we walked over to Chinatown and had dinner at Joy Yee's. They have the best smoothies. I had mango with tapioca balls. Dawn had passion fruit with jelly--hers was more like a drink than a smoothie. She tried mine and it took a minute to get used to the tapioca.

The line out the door was much shorter than usual, maybe due to the holiday, and we got a table in record time. We split the appetizer platter: spring rolls, egg rolls, shrimp, chicken, and some slices of an unrecognizable white substance that tasted like mortadella. Dawn discovered she likes hoisin sauce. She wants to take her dad over there some time.

Afterwards we went window shopping in old Chinatown. We poked through Giftland, where I can get all the house slippers I want if I can just remember to bring money next time. Dawn liked checking out the anime posters and the lucky bamboo. We stopped to look in windows full of shiny jewelry and tiny knickknacks. "It's so small!" she marveled.

At the very end I stopped at the grocery store and the dry cleaners. "Sorry to make you wait through that," I said.

"It's OK," she said. "It's always an adventure to go out with you." I'm glad she thinks so.

Bad News for Big Picture

Last week the Chicago Tribune wrote a small, unsigned and rather scary story about the high school where Dawn and her brother go. I'm pasting it here because the link will expire soon. For now, just read this and reflect on the head of high schools saying central office needs to "make sure our kids are receiving the support they need." (At a price society is willing to pay is the subtext, I'm afraid. And their per pupil costs would likely be slightly lower now if CPS had permitted them a freshman class--they would have had to pay for two more teachers, but the rest of those costs were fixed, I suspect.)

Costly, small high school becomes a closing target

Published December 21, 2006

BACK OF THE YARDS -- Chicago Public Schools is considering phasing out an expensive high school that stresses small classes and internships, officials confirmed Wednesday.

Big Picture-Back of the Yards High School, 4946 S. Paulina St., was not allowed to accept any freshmen this year because district officials had concerns about the academic program at the tiny school, said Donald Pittman, district director of high school programs. Pittman said a decision about the school's future is expected by next month.

The school currently serves about 75 students and has a budget of $1.6 million, which works out to more than $21,000 per student. There are about 25 students each in grades 10 to 12, and class sizes are around 12, compared with 28 in a regular high school class.

"We need to take a closer look at the school ... and make sure our kids are receiving the support they need," Pittman said. "The money is not what's driving it, but it's definitely a factor."


Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

more on Oaxaca

Today was a national day of solidarity with Oaxaca. In its honor, I'm going to post some links to check out more information from a journalist we met with, John Gibler. I'm having trouble getting the hypertext to work, so you may have to cut and paste these in your browsers, people. So sorry.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/201443211

And here are some links to what delegation folks are getting out to the world:

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/audio_library/wv_radec06.asp#18

http://shows.weru.org/archives/radioactive/ra-20061221

http://timethief.wordpress.com/2006/12/22/canadian-activist-condemns-nafta-role-in-mexico


Finally, here are some great photos from the trip:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rsypeace/WFPOaxacaDelegation2006

Un Milagro en las Posadas

....or a Miracle in las Posadas. Las Posadas are a Mexican tradition for the nine nights before Christmas Eve, when everybody goes and walks from house to house re-enacting the efforts of Joseph and Mary to get a room the night Jesus was born. They sing songs and we end up back at the church hall for pozole (stew), pan dulce (baked goods) and a pinata. Some nights they even have tamales.

Anyway, Joey decided to go with me last night. We had hot punch at the house on the next block up for starters, then walked up Marshfield to 46th and over to Ashland, where we made a big parade crossing the street with our tiki torches, stopped at the bakery next to IHM, then went to the hall for marimbas with our pozole. Fr. Bruce plays! I didn't know that. He got up and played with some of the young guys for a while. Jose seemed pretty interested in watching the marimba players, who are all teenage boys. There were three girls there who were watching and giggling. At the end of their first number one called out, "Your number one fan!!" and they all started laughing. Who knew you could be a rock star playing the marimba?

But believe it or not, that's not the miracle. The miracle came when Joey turned to me out of nowhere and said, "I'm thinking about transferring." This was a reference to my yearlong campaign to get him and his parents to think about putting him in San Miguel. Here's a link to see what the school is like:

http://www.sanmiguelchicago.org/AboutSMS/boy.html

Frankly, I had pretty much given up on it since Joey has been saying he wants to stay with his friends and his mom seems to be looking at the idea more as a threat to get him to work than as an opportunity he should take advantage of. (His parents may be worried about the cost, too, even though it's much cheaper than regular Catholic school.)

So I don't know what hit him, but he said he was interested. "I'm glad to hear you say that. I think it would be very good for your future," I said. "They work really hard with all their kids to make sure they go to good high schools."

"At Chavez they only do that with the good kids," he said. (Much as I love Joey, I know he's not considered a "good kid" at school. He's not a bad kid, but C's are his top grade and I know he's fooling around in class a lot.)

"I know. At San Miguel they do that with all the kids."

On the way home we started talking about how to count time from B.C. to A.D. He was telling me about some timeline he found with a friend on the Internet, so he came over to my house and we found it on Google. We started looking through it and got all caught up in photos of the Great Wall of China. Here's a fun one that was part of the Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Greatwall-SA14.jpg

Amnesty International Alert on Oaxaca

Here is the link to the December 6 AI alert on Oaxaca. It mentions EDUCA and the Red Oaxaquena (Oaxaca Human Rights Network). Although I think you have to print and fax the letters, they do give you sample text to work with and make it relatively easy to get the letters done.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/mexico/actions.do;jsessionid=B830A5B3AB705B0A6F0373C18AA800EE

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors!

And beautiful wrought-iron ones, built by father and son in the garage, make outstanding neighbors. Dawn's dad and older brother brought out the gates for the front and the side entrances to the fence today. Julian told me he helped make the main fence, too. "I put all the swirls in. Twenty-six of them," he announced proudly. "All in one day. At the end, my arms were hurting."

Julian and I had a very nice conversation this afternoon while his dad was welding the frame for the side gate. He was telling me they have been studying global warming in school and so at home the whole family has switched to longer-lasting, energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs. Julian swears that when he's in the basement watching TV he's turning off all the other lights. (I don't know if that's good for his eyes, but I didn't say anything.)

He was also telling me how his little brother is making a lot of progress toward walking and talking. He likes to be held upright and to kick his legs as if he's walking. And he's making those "ma,ma" noises that prep for the real "Mama" to come. Julian says he talks to his brother in English and so does Aurora at least some of the time. I brought back some baby books in Spanish from Cuernavaca--I need to go out and get a couple of English ones, too.

Then Dad called for Julian to come and put the gate in the frame. I took some shots of them working together. Later, they borrowed my flashlight so he could weld a couple more specific points. I'll have to get a shot of them together in front of their finished product tomorrow or later in the week, when they get the side fence up between my house and theirs.

I just locked the gate a few minutes ago. Tony came by in search of a few bucks but I had to tell him I'd been cleaned out already (by the less desirable element, I thought to myself). When he left, I locked the gate behind him. Somebody rang my bell at 8 o'clock this morning. Now that the new, much taller fence is up next door, people won't be able to jump the fence and bother me. Hurray.

Also, it appears someone is pouring a foundation on the corner lot across the street to build another house there. "Maybe it's somebody rich from another part of town," Julian guessed. It's certainly cheaper to build here than in other parts of the city, I'd imagine. I hope whoever is building it already has a buyer in mind (or is building it for themselves), and that they plan to live here, but we'll see...

Oaxaca comes to Cuernavaca

Last weekend I had the great pleasure of seeing former Chicagoan Kathy Long, OP (Dominican, for those not in the know), who is now running an awesome social justice program, the Cuernavaca Center for Intercultural Dialogue on Development, or CCIDD. Here's their web site:

www.ccidd.org

If you look at the staff photos, you can get a little sense of the beauty of the center's buildings and grounds, but not as much as I wish you could. It's a former mansion that can sleep more than 30 people. I arrived just after a group had left, and it was incredibly quiet and peaceful, a welcome change from the nonstop delegation pace and the sprawl and mystery (to me) of Mexico City.

While at the center, I had the privilege of meeting three indigenous activists from northern Oaxaca state who had taken refuge outside the state after other members of their group were detained as their bus was going to the march in Oaxaca City on November 25. They made the important point that much of the focus has been on the capital, but human rights violations are taking place across the state. Last Friday an activist of the Trici nation was killed by snipers, I believe also in Northern Oaxaca.

Here is the action alert, from Christian Peacemaker Teams:

http://cpt.org/archives/2006/dec06/0000.html

Recuerdos/Souvenirs

I got home a few minutes ago and there were three messages on my voice mail: two from Oscar and one from his big brother Fernando. "Could we come get our presents????" was the major thrust of all three--at least in the last one, Fernando's, he said, "I'm sorry we didn't come last night. We had to go somewhere."

I waited for them for an hour last night. Today I have a sore throat I didn't have yesterday, and I still have a house that needs someone to come through with a backhoe to clear the crap out of every room on the first floor. But it was kind of fun to hear the excitement in their voices through the messages, so I held off dinner and called them to come over. This time they were here right away.

While I was in Cuernavaca last weekend, I went shopping with my friend Kathy at the main artisan's market. She introduced me to a young man named Federico. Federico, who looks to be in his late teens or early 20s, used to live on the streets of Cuernavaca. He found his way to a local group that helps street youth develop their talents and make a legitimate living as artists. Federico carves and paints wood into various decorative pieces. I bought two sets of coasters, two crosses and two Christmas-tree ornaments, which were the gifts for the boys.

When the doorbell rang, I picked up the ornaments--one a fish, one a bird, both with many and varied colors--put one in each hand and put my hands behind my back after opening the door. "OK, guys, you have to pick who gets which hand," I told them. Fernando chose my left hand and won the bird; Oscar got the fish in my right hand. Federico had delicately printed his name in white paint in unobtrusive places on each object. I pointed that out, and Fernando and I showed Oscar where Federico had drilled a hole to put a string through his fish and hang it on the tree.

"Wow, that's cool!" said Oscar. "Thank you," they chorused, with big smiles. I'm glad to know some kids for whom this kind of present is a big deal. And iI'm glad to know Federico's Christmas will be a little nicer, too.

Action Alert

Hi, friends-- I'm well and in Cuernavaca, but folks in Oaxaca are still under threat. This is an alert about the executive director of EDUCA, the main local partner our delegation worked with. Global Exchange put this word out and I heard the same story firsthand from EDUCA staff last week.

2.) On Monday November 27, the pro-government station, "Radio Ciudadana"falsely identified the offices of Services for an Alternative Education(EDUCA, A.C.) as a site where, "Molotov bombs are being fabricated andseveral [tactical] movements of the APPO are taking place". The broadcasturged listeners to burn down the office. Marcos Leyva, the director ofEDUCA was named and likewise threatened. In the same broadcast two otherChurch affiliated) NGOs -- Pastoral Centre and the Parish of SietePrinicipes were also named.Marcos Leyva is a friend of Global Exchange. He is a man of greatintegrity who has been involved in social justice work for many years.***

Action Request: ***Please act to safeguard both Marcos Leyva's safety and that of the otherstaff members of EDUCA and other non-governmental organizations.We ask you to please write the following officials to urge an immediatede-escalation of the conflict that includes withdrawal of Federal forcesfrom Oaxaca, the repatriation and release of all political prisoners, aswell as full investigation and prosecution of those using the radio tocall for violence against non-governmental organizations and their staff.Please write to:
Felipe Calderòn Hinojosa--see ealier post for contact info.

DR. JOSÈ LUIS SOBERANES PRESIDENTE DE LA COMISIO'N NACIONAL DE DERECHOS HUMANOS FAX + 55 56 81 71 99

LIC. ULISES RUIZ ORTIZ GOBERNADOR DEL ESTADO DE OAXACAFax: + 951 5020530, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

What to Say

Sorry, guys, I was having tech trouble and had to post quickly. Here are some key points to make in an email:

1. An immediate end of acts of intimidation and repression by the federal and state police and government authorities

2. A guarantee by the Mexican government for the respect of the human rights of all Oaxaqueños most especially those who have been arrested.

3. An immediate end to the arbitrary detention in the streets of citizens.

4. An immediate end to the illegal entry of homes.

5. Cease the torture and abuse of prisoners.

6. Safe return of those who have been "disappeared".

7. Access of detainees to legal representation, family members and medical attention to those who are injured in order to ensure their well being and protection of their human rights.

8. Immediate withdrawal of the arrest warrants for those who are social activists, including members of the teachers union (SNTE in Spanish).

9. Immediate withdrawal of Mexican military from the state of Oaxaca.

Emails to the president and governor are most important, the ones further down are to state and federal human rights organizations. We heard the state org has no teeth and the feds are so far not very willing to intervene, so I'd try the federal one first.

If you send an email, please post a comment and let us know. Thanks!

Send Emails on Oaxaca!

Finally, I have some email addresses for Mexican government officials. If you have time to send a short email requesting respect for human rights in Oaxaca, I'll list officials and their email addresses below. Underneath that I'll put a list of demands put forth on an action alert from a church-based human rights group in Mexico City. Here are the emails:

Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa
President of Mexico
felipe.calderon.hinojosa@presidencia.gob.mx

Ulises Ruiz Ortiz
Governor of Oaxaca State

gobernador@oaxaca.gob.mx

Dr. Jose Luis Soberanes

Presidente de la Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos

Fax +55 5681 7199

correo@cndh.gob.mx

Lic. Lizbeth Caña Cableza

Procuradora General de Justicia del Estado de Oaxaca

Fax +951 5115 519

procuraduria@oaxaca.gob.mx

Lic. Jaime Mario Pérez Jiménez
Presidente de la Comisión Estatal de Derechos Humanos Oaxaca

Fax +915 513 5185

correo@cedhoax.org

"There is no government today in Oaxaca"

That quote was spoken by Raul Ruiz, president of the local association of electrical suppliers here in Oaxaca City. We spoke with him and with the owner of one of the finest restaurants in Oaxaca, Luis Ugartechea, who have helped a local NGO here, EDUCA, with a citizenship initiative.

The message they asked us to send to the US government today was as followsÑ

Human rights are being severely violated here in Oaxaca.
There is no government functioning here. "The government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz is nothing."

They encouraged us to remind the US government to encourage Mexico to live up to human rights standards. Other folks have told us that Mexico is currently chair of human rights at the UN, a very ironic position to be in given the detentions in Nayarit, raids on schools and roundups of civil leadership happening here.

Luis: "I feel sad. I feel very angry. I don't want to live in this situation. We didn't have to live in this situatin. If we had smart people in power, this would not be necessary."

Tomorrow we go to the town of Zaachila, outside Oaxaca City, where federal police raided schools last week and arrested teachers in front of their students. We understand some people we would have stayed with have left town due to outstanding warrants for their arrest. We have been told there is hope our presence there tomorrow may defuse tensions between police and the citizenry.

I may not be able to write again until Wednesday, but I'll try to get on tomorrow to talk about one of our other meetings today if at all possible.

No Justice in Oaxaca

Today we met with two surviving relatives of people who were killed in the struggle here. One was the sister of someone who died during a peaceful march, the other was connected to a shooting at a barricade, Amnesty International sent out an alert on this case which I will post later. I'll let their quotes speak for themselves:

From the relative of the person who died during a march: " We didn't ask for justice (in regard to her brother's death) because we know it doesn't exist. We know first hand that the person who determines justice is Ulises Ruiz. What does he do? He pays money in abundance to snipers, to assassins that have salaries."

"Teachers have been attacked in schools. They've been captured in front of students.It's happened in little towns outside Oaxaca (City). Imagine what's happening in towns further out who have no way to communicate."

(Crying) "I want someone to know what's happening in Oaxaca. So many people are disappeared. So many people are prisoners."

From the person with knowledge of the Amnesty International case: "This was part of a fear campaign to show people they could get killed for being at a barricade."

"All this for bringing coffee in the streets. Is there justice? I don't know. And how to resolve this situation, I don't know."

And this from a human rights defender working with them and with others imprisoned in Nayarit state: "A lot of human rights defenders are leaving Oaxaca state because they are afraid."

Her organization, the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights, is committed to staying, though they are already facing intimidation from police. "Maybe there will come a time when the danger is so great we have to step back, but not yet."

Please consider calling or writing the Mexican consulate in Chicago to ask that those imprisoned in Nayarit be treated legally. So far they have not been charged, seen lawyers or been able to contact family members. I'll try to get contact info for the consulate up here tomorrow.

Dancing among the Tanks

After our meetings today, Sam and I headed out to the Zòcalo to check out the scene. Despite the huge federal police encampment and the slight drizzle, Saturday night still goes on. There was a mariachi band playing alongside one of the churches. We had to walk through police trucks to get to the steps, and the crowd was not large, but they were there. The band played a tune from the 50s and 60s dance halls, and a few older couples got up to dance. I took some photos. One silver-haired tall guy with a bald spot was amazing--fancy footwork and lots of combinations with spins for his partner. Who knows if they were PRIistas celebrating or APPistas refusing to be cowed by the troops? Hey, it was all fun. And the bandleader said they did a song in Zapotec to honor his mother tongue.

On the more serious side, we met with reps from the Oaxacan Human Rights Network today. They had a lot to say about the weakness of the state human rights commissioner, who is a political appointee, thus a flunky of the governor. They also had a lot to say about police treatment of detainees, including torture tactics straight out of the Jon Burge playbook in Chicago, like electroshock to the groin. They are putting together a fund to support those imprisoned in Nayarit. For more information, check out their web site (in Spanish):
www.rodh.org.mx

¡Hasta mañana!

Oaxaca Tattler

Well, Marshfield Tattler makes it to Mexico this year after all. If you are reading this, please pass the word that I will be trying to give updates daily on the tense situation in Oaxaca City.

This morning I arrived in the Mexico City airport just in time to watch Mexican congressional reps throw chairs and come to (very stagey-looking) blows over the inauguration of Felipe Calderón. The Televisa people loved showing that footage over and over again. I hear there were large street demonstrations in Mexico City, but I didn t leave the airport. Here in Oaxaca I was told there was a very small march, much less than feared by state officials, who reduced bus service to avoid the chance that demonstrators might commandeer them to reconstruct barricades.

The state made a concerted effort this week to remove as much trace as possible of the popular demonstrations against Gov. Ulises Ruiz. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of troops are patrolling the Zocalo and environs, the last barricade was removed a couple of days ago, and there has been some effort to remove anti-Ruiz and pro-APPO graffiti. However, there is plenty of graffiti left in areas outside the Zócalo.

Also this week, Citizen Radio (a station reported to be run by PRI supporters) encouraged people to come and burn down the offices of EDUCA, a local NGO that provides popular education, citizenship and economic development to Oaxacans. They are a partner organization of Witness for Peace. Death threats were issued against their executive director. He is now in hiding and the office was closed this week.

I will try to get links and action steps up here tomorrow. In the mean time, Anice, if you want to post the key links from the email you received about letters to Mexican government officials protesting the detention and out-of-state transfers of people here, I would appreciate it.

We have been told that we are the largest international group in the city right now. I will write more as soon as I can.

La Chofera

I drove the red minivan for the second time today. Dawn, her mom, her little brothers and I all went up north so she could go meet my counselor. (She's ready for some counseling; long story for another time.) It was raining and miserable and traffic was slow. We were late and the gas tank was almost empty. Aurora's mom was beginning to worry we wouldn't make it to the office before we ran out of gas. Fortunately the BP and the counseling office are within steps of each other.

I let Dawn out and waited, double-parked, until she got in the building. Then we went around the block and ended up back at the gas station. I put in about half a tank of gas and left Dawn's mom with Joey and the new baby parked in front of the convenience store while I went over to the office to wait for Dawn to finish. I read the paper. My counselor keeps the music up pretty high so you can't hear, which is good, but I heard them laughing a couple of times. That seemed like a good sign to me. She came out and we went down. She liked him. She got homework--he gives me homework, too. I didn't ask what it was. I just hope she didn't lose it or leave it in the car.

Driving back was a trip and a half. The weather was miserable and it was smack in the middle of rush hour. The car radio was on, in Spanish, and the announcer said something about Oaxaca and then about Veracruz. I was pretty sure the gist of it was don't go to Oaxaca for vacation this year, try Veracruz instead. So I said, "Yeah, this is Veracruz's year. Only fools like me are going to Oaxaca now."

Dawn's mom laughed. She was trying to say something about only people who like problems would go there. I said, "People who like a dangerous life?" She laughed and said yes.

I leave for Oaxaca tomorrow night. Who knows what I'll find when I get there, if I can get out of the airport in Mexico City--protests are expected there Friday as Vicente Fox steps down and Calderon is supposed to take power. Meanwhile, narrow loser (some say victim of fraud winner) Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is setting up a parallel government and a massive protest at the Zocalo.

I've never been to Mexico before--at least it'll be an interesting visit. Even if it's interesting in the sense of the Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times"....

Workings of the Spirit...or was that spirits?

Late this morning I heard the bumping noises out front that mean somebody, probably Joey, is playing soccer in my front yard. Around noon the bumping stopped and I heard a lot of talking. Eventually I looked out and found five kids, four boys and a girl, sitting on my steps. There were two young blonde coeds at the bottom of the steps, and two well-scrubbed young guys in coats and ties standing on the sidewalk outside my front gate.

Great. The missionaries, I thought. Probably Indiana church.

The First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana sends buses into poor neighborhoods on Sundays and takes kids off to their massive campground for kid stuff and indoctrination. I knew about them from the North Side, where a Mennonite friend of mine who runs a youth center warned me about them. The mission was very heavy-handed and often the food and games promised didn't live up to expectations, she told me.

So I came outside. The two guys cleared off immediately, but the girls, especially the curly blonde with way too much eyeshadow, were more persistent.

"You're coming tomorrow, right, Eric?" Eric, who is new to me, stayed quiet. "But you came before," Curly pressed. "If you don't come, I'm gonna cry."

To a littler one she said, "You like it, right?" giving him what she thought was a friendly poke in the shoulder. The kids were very polite. Too polite. Frozen, like deer in the headlights.

I just stood and listened for a bit, taking in the situation. The only kid on the steps I knew was Joey. A couple of these kids apparently were veterans. While Curly was definitely giving an emotionally manipulative hard sell, I didn't really want to just go in guns blazing.

Eventually I asked Curly, "What church are you with?"

"First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana," Curly said proudly.

She went on in the same vein a bit longer, promising candy on the bus ride to Hammond: "not just a Tootsie Roll, but a whole candy bar or a bag of chips or a pop, something like that."

Then she said something to Joey. That was the last straw.

"Excuse me," I said. "I'm Catholic, and he's Catholic. We already have a church we belong to. I appreciate what you're trying to do with young people, but I'd prefer you not proselytize in my yard."

"I'm sorry," Candy said. She and her sidekick split immediately.

All the kids looked at me with relief. Jose put his hands in the namaste position, like a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance.

"You're like our teacher," one of the other kids, maybe Eric, said admiringly.

"If they come back and bother you again, ring the bell and I'll come out and tell them to leave," I said, and went back inside to get the garbage and throw it out.

After a few trips in-and-out and a long stretch of indoor cleaning, I came back outside. The kids were still on the step, and one of the regular stray cats who hang out here was on the front walk below them.

"That cat's going to die in four years," Joey said.

"How do you know?"

"We're talking to the spirits," he said. The girl in the group had a notebook with various numbers written on the open pad.

"Oh, like with a Ouija board?" I asked. I don't know if they knew what that was. "Well, I don't believe in those things, but have fun."

Maybe we should have stuck with the missionaries!

Death to the Disciples!

Yesterday afternoon was full of vignettes. I'll start with the most disturbing one.

Friday dismissals in high schools are always the craziest time. The nasty fight I saw in my brief stint as a high school teacher this fall happened on Friday afternoon. Everyone remarked on how Fridays are often days when teens act out violently.

Yesterday at 2:45 I was home, for once, hanging out on my neighbors' front porch while Joey and some of his buddies were playing football in my front yard. In fact, they were playing American football with a soccer ball because they didn't have a football.

"That's pretty smart," observed one of the older boys hanging on the porch with me. He goes to Big Picture with Julian. Dawn, Julian, Julian's buddy and the buddy's girlfriend were all hanging out watching the pee-wee football, petting the stray cat, etc. Big Picture lets out at 2 p.m. every other Friday, I think for teacher meetings.

Meanwhile, Richards High on the east side of Ashland lets out at 2:30 or so, I believe. It was about 2:45 when a young man ran down 50th with four other young men hot at his heels. One of the pursuers was carrying a baseball bat. I whipped out my cell phone immediately and called 911.

One young boy, so fair I thought he might be white, stood in the intersection and hollered, "Death to the Disciples! Death to the Disciples!" before heading west to rejoin the chase.

All my neighbor kids were staring down the street.

A girl they knew went by. "What happened?" called Julian.

"Gang on gang stuff," she said. Well, we knew that already. Within a few more seconds, the pee-wees were back to football and the big kids were petting the cat again.

As far as I know, the police never came. I'm pretty sure Mr. Worrisome saw me make the phone call. Later on he was coming down the street with a guy who might have been in the fray, but I wasn't sure. He certainly looked too old to be in high school.

As they parted ways, Mr. Worrisome told his companion, "Stay out of trouble."

Mr. Married Sighting

I saw my old friend Mr. Married on the street this afternoon, but not on Marshfield north of here, his last known address. Now he's south of 51st, a Mexican pioneer in African-American territory. He was washing his car on Wood somewhere beyond the pale. He looks terrible--he's aged even more than when I last saw him, and it looks like he's lost some teeth.

I rode down to Garfield Boulevard and was reminded that Chicago International has a charter campus right on that corner. About a year ago I was talking to the director of that network of schools and asked if she had any Latino kids yet. She said no. I said, "Get ready. They're coming." Mr. Married has a nephew who may be school age by now. I wonder where he's going to school.

Report Card Pickup I

Yesterday we went to get Joey's report card. It was literally take a number. Chairs were lined along both sides of the hallway and some young blonde was handing out slips of paper with numbers, like a homemade version of the deli counter. She estimated we'd be waiting 20 minutes. I took the number while Joey played soccer out in front of the building and his mom waited in their van with his new little brother. I saw School Lady with her daughters. She tells me she's not spending as much time at Chavez these days because Richards is eating up all her time. Her oldest daughter is sporting a little henna in her hair, I think.

Junior and Oscar and their mom were all there, too. We met them in the stairwell. Mom says Oscar's writing is terrible. I assume she means his handwriting, but if a teacher actually told her he needs to improve how he's communicating on paper, I'll be delighted someone was paying attention.

When Joey and his mom and I went in, all three of his teachers were there. They kicked off in English until I told them I wasn't a strong translator. One of them was, so she took over and repeated what had been said already. The basic message was Joey needs to do his homework, but his homeroom teacher has spent a good bit of time with him so far this fall and that is sparking Joey's interest in school. A good sign. I gave them my phone number and asked them to call me and explain the assignments to me when he has major projects or reports to do so I can help him more effectively. They seemed delighted by that.

Later that evening I stopped by Joey's house and he was on the sofa doing his math homework while his big brother had the baby on his chest, watching TV with Mom. Very cute.

Halloween in the Hood

Well, the Tattler returns after a long hiatus. (I'll write another post another time to fill you in on life since August.)

Today I got home later than I had hoped. I was on the Ashland bus around 6 p.m. and rode past the Haunted Horde of children, from tots to teens, invading the stores along Ashland and 47th. The Walgreens parking lot on the corner had the fewest cars I've ever seen, as a score of children and some adults pressed in to get goodies. "Are you buying something?" a security guard asked a boy. "Candy?"

"No. My mom sent me to get..." I kept going. In the decimated candy aisle, Papa was trying to pacify little gorilla-costumed Cesar, who was wailing and squirming in his stroller. "Ay, Cesar, calmate..." I squeezed past them and past Mama, who was picking over the remnants. Fortunately they had a big bag of trial size Hershey's bars, some old-school Reese's peanut butter cups, Twix and 100 Grands. (I'm old enough to remember when they were $100,000 Bars, but don't tell Cesarito, OK?)

So I get home and it's too late for the crowd. One mom and her spiderwomanish clad toddler are coming down the street as I'm checking the mail. "Do you have any candy?" Mom asks politely.

"I'm just getting set up. Can you come back in five minutes?"

"Sure."

It was more like 50, but she and her little one return. I did get to see Junior and his family--they were going somewhere and not in costume, but I gave the boys some candy anyway. Joey came by in camo--he hid alongside the door and said "boo!" when I came out. It was way cuter than scary.

My favorite girls from down the block stopped by with their mom and big sister. "You missed!" the younger one told me, when I dropped a Hershey's in her bag. She had a paper bag inside the plastic one. I dropped in three more before I got it right. We were laughing. She's gonna be a gordita (little fatty, an endearment among Mexicans) if she keeps up that trick to get more candy!

Then all was quiet, but the two guys I've seen sitting out front of the house next door strolled by. One had his cell phone to his ear. They have the distinction of being the first dealers I've ever actually seen drugs on. They appeared to be eyeing their favorite perch. My neighbor is turning the fence out front into a wall, but the job is less than a quarter done, so the "wall" makes a nice seat for passers-by.

I saw them eyeing the wall, and I looked at them very carefully. They saw me. We all said 'hey, how you doing?'

At first, nobody said anything else. Then, the guy without the phone said, "Trick or treat?" kind of jokingly, kind of in a "why not?" spirit.

I caught the spirit of why not, and said, "Sure."

"Do you have Reese's?" he asked, walking over.
"Why, yes I do!"

He brightened up and put some extra spring in his step. His buddy liked Reese's, too.
I gave each of them a Reese's peanut butter cup. They thanked me.

"Happy Halloween," they said, and kept going down the block.

A bit later the cry of Yup-yup could be heard on the corner. I am so tired of that guy I just called 911 right away. "He's a nuisance," I told them. He left before the squad car arrived.

When the cop car drove the wrong way down the street, flashing that annoying small spotlight, I was standing in my doorway, looking for trick-or-treaters, wearing my bike helmet and orange vest (I guess I thought I would dress up as a bike messenger while handing out the goodies.)

"Thanks for coming by," I said to the cop. (Since all the criminal element was long gone I figured I might as well out myself."

"Did you call?" the cop inquired, on the same principle.

"Yeah. The guy left a few minutes ago. But thanks for coming anyway."

Freakazoid

That's what I'm feeling like today. Am I the only person here who is trying to think about how to develop a scope and sequence that isn't just topics and what to do for a semester? I don't have time to do what I was trained to do (and barely remember, let's be honest)--develop a scope and sequence of conceptual units that spiral skills upward over time. I don't see that in what I'm getting for this American Lit course at all. And I don't know how I'm going to teach this if I'm not doing what I'm trained to do. Yikes.

Now it's on to learn how to beg for stuff on Donors Choose. I'd like to beg for a few dozen reams of paper right now. Two schools are allotted six reams of paper a week. That's handouts for 800 kids. Those reams will disappear quickly.

My Whole Life Changed

...and so did this blog. I just started my first day at my new job, teaching English at the School of Social Justice on the Little Village/Lawndale campus.

School/campus web site: www.lvlhs.org

click on the tab for Social Justice.

Yesterday I spent half a day at the Chicago Public Schools New Hire Center trying to get on staff. There was a snafu about my position between the board and the school, but it got fixed somehow.

My first question to my principal, Rito Martinez, this morning was, "So, am I hired yet?"

"You're staffed," he told me.

Some folks at CPS central office know. Best comments were:

Arne Duncan, CEO: "That's a gutsy move."
Peter Cunningham, communications director (excuse me, director of external affairs):
"Wow, my life just got a whole lot easier."

Mine just got a whole lot harder, I suspect. There's a lot of work to do here. I have a relatively light load--four classes of 25 students, two preps. Sounds like the suburbs, right? But I haven't taught in 10 years, I have a more-or-less weekly elective I'm cooking up from relative scratch, and while one of my English classes seems to have curriculum in place, the other is much less fleshed out and I don't feel really supported by my partner.

So I have work to do.

Aldermanic Challenger???

I found a flyer in my mailbox last night for a lady who plans to challenge Shirley Coleman in February. Alas, I've forgotten her name at the moment. All I can think of is Joan Crawford but I bet that's wrong. (No, she's not Mommie Dearest, at least one hopes not.)

Anyway, we'll see if she has any substance.

Cool Link

http://anai415.spaces.live.com/PersonalSpace.aspx?_c02_owner=1

I found this blog today, written by a woman from the Dominican Republic. She's a teacher and a novelist, and she's a lot better at posting photos than I am.

If you'd like to see what Marshfield Avenue might feel like in the DR, check her out.

Apparently she has to pay off the garbage guys to take her trash. We've yet to sink that low on Marshfield, but who knows??

Pandillera (Gang) Marketing

...or...When the Souls Come Marching In: The Latin Souls, that is. Apparently somebody got out of jail while I was in Colombia and the Soula are back in action. They have taken to graffiti marketing--there's a lot of new Souls graffiti along Marshfield Avenue, most notably across the railroad bridge above Marshfield at 48th. The rusty railroad bridge has panels that exactly match the number of spaces needed to write "LATIN SOULS" in white spray paint. Look out Madison Avenue, here come the homeboys...

Of course at least three of us have been calling 311 and the alderman's office to get Graffiti Blasters out there, but nothing has happened yet. Alderman Coleman has her meeting tomorrow at her church west on 50th. Guess I'll have to get up and go.

Homecoming

I never wrote about what happened the night I got home to Chicago. Dawn and I had a long catch-up session out on the back steps. I got the impression she hadn't had too many people to talk to while I was gone, and lots of things had happened that piled up in her mind. So she put them out there.

Boy troubles, friend troubles, family pressures, just feeling lonesome. Eventually she was crying and hugged me and said, "You are my mom."

I hugged back, but I said, "I'm not your mom, honey. Maybe your aunt."

Everybody needs a grownup friend who's not their mom or their dad, right? But I sure wish I spoke better Spanish, because I'd like to be a better friend to Dawn's mom, too.

Dawn's really wishing her mom could be more of her friend. She'd like to talk to her more about boys and problems and being a teenager. But from what Dawn told me, I think her mom is afraid if she acts like a buddy she won't be a strict enough parent to keep her daughter out of trouble. But if her daughter doesn't have a buddy, she'll act up and get in trouble.

I understand that dilemma very well. It's actually a lot easier to talk to teenagers about their problems when you aren't their parent. Even being their teacher is harder than just being their friend. There's less pressure to have all the answers or do exactly the right thing. And there's less worry that if something goes really wrong you'll be held responsible. It's bad enough being held responsible by your own conscience, at least if your conscience is anything like mine.

It's been hard to decide whether to encourage conversation about teen problems. I don't want to say things that would counter whatever her parents are telling her, but I know my experience of teen life is a little closer to hers than theirs, in some ways. I know what kids are up to and I know how kids who aren't up to it get through that time. But I've been deliberately holding off on letting the conversation get anywhere near sex until she's 15 and officially come of age in some way.

Despite my resolve, we got there, at least a little, on the back steps two Sundays ago. As I suspected, she hasn't done anything I would disapprove of. My standards are probably less strict than her parents (she's not allowed to date until she turns 15 and my sister was dating at 14--I wasn't!), but they are stricter than the U.S. average (we're all Catholic here). But I'm a big believer in forewarned is forearmed and I know that sex education in CPS is not very good, generally speaking. I also think there are things a grownup friend can say that don't get said enough in classrooms, about love and respect and having your own bottom line that nobody can push you into crossing.

She'll be 15 in two weeks or so.

Meeting Ricardo

I'd like you all to meet the man who got me to go to Colombia. (Or at least one of them.) Ricardo Esquivia is a lawyer-turned-organizer who has created some very impressive church networks and NGOs. He is currently working in the Montes de Maria region of Colombia, which is a flashpoint on the touchy subject of paramilitary demobilization. Part of the reason I went on this trip was to get to meet him. I've heard a bit about him and his work over the last few years.

A few years ago, one of a number of times when Ricardo's life was in danger due to his work, I received a request to write letters to the Colombian government on his behalf. It was a big moment on this trip when he talked to us about his experiences surviving night raids and arrest. Afterwards I was able to thank him for the opportunity to make his acquaintance. Over the last 15 years I've written a lot of letters to a lot of different countries hoping they might help save an activist's life, but Ricardo is the only person on whose behalf I've written whom I've ever met afterwards.

Here's a photo and article about a peacemaking award he received last year:
http://www.churchworldservice.org/news/archives/2005/10/348.html

This link, to an interview in which he talks a lot about water, has a photo of him with Barbara Gerlach, a UCC minister in Washington who helped lead our delegation:

http://www.churchworldservice.org/Educ_Advo/partners/2005/esquivia.html