Cook County 7th District Race Heats Up

Back of the Yards is part of Cook County's 7th District, and the race for commissioner heated up over the weekend, with Mark Brown's Sun Times column revealing incumbent Joseph Mario Moreno is skirting campaign finance law. A drug company with a county contract contributed $25,000 to the political action committee that hosted a fundraising dinner for Moreno. By law, county contractors can contribute no more than $1500 to candidates for county commissioner. But a PAC can contribute an unlimited amount to a candidate. This is known as "soft money."

What this story says to me is Moreno fears his challenger, Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, enough to go after some big bucks to defend himself. Interestingly, this doesn't seem to have made him run scared enough to get some boots on the ground--while Garcia's people have been out and about doorknocking in the neighborhood, I haven't heard a peep from Moreno people. Their only evidence of existence is the signs in the businesses along 47th and down Ashland--they did a good job of getting their signs out.

However, it looks like Garcia has done a better job of gathering endorsements. Read the Trib's glowing praise for him here. And check out the list of other endorses at his web site. I've only received one piece of mail from the Moreno side so far. Instead of official endorsements, it contained photos and a set of quotations about Moreno from a variety of local leaders, including Craig Chico of Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council and Fr. Bruce Wellems of Holy Cross/IHM. Thing is, you can't really tell if they were endorsing Moreno's candidacy or if they were just saying in effect, oh yeah, he's a nice guy. I'd like to know how that mailer got put together.

Chavez News

Amanda Rivera is the interim principal at Chavez Elementary. Mr. Correa has left. I don't know what's going on regarding the search for his replacement. The Local School Council is now alternating morning and afternoon meetings--I think the next morning meeting is in January. Maybe I'll be able to make that one and find out how the search for a new principal is going.

Sarah, who was having such a hard time adjusting to Orozco, has returned to Chavez. I saw her walking home from school the other day with her big sister and her nieces. She looked perfectly happy. It's a good reminder that academics aren't everything when it comes to a child's school experience.

Right before the holiday I stopped in at Chavez to let them know I still have school supplies left over from last summer's block party. The gentleman I spoke with took my name and number and said someone from school could come by and pick them up. That would be a big help. That's also how I confirmed what I had heard about the interim principal. Ms. Rivera was the founding principal at Ames Middle School in Logan Square, where she was highly regarded. I'm glad someone with strong middle school experience is at the helm at Chavez, even temporarily. I have heard negative comments from parents about the state of affairs at the upper grade center (grades 5-8). I hope Ms. Rivera can straighten that out a bit.

Mural Celebration Saturday

Here are the details for the mural celebration. Mothers for Peace/Madres por La Paz and Precious Blood Ministries are sponsoring a celebration of the new mural at 49th and Throop (by the railroad viaduct), from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday September 19. Mothers and youth worked together to design and paint the mural, which features a host of quotations from famous peace activists: Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, and Mahatma Gandhi, to name a few.

I'll try to get out there and get some pictures tomorrow if at all possible, but life with a newborn means there's no telling whether we'll get there or not.

Hoops on Marshfield Tomorrow Night

Hoops in the Hood will be hosting youth basketball in the newly-paved Chavez Elementary parking lot at 48th and Marshfield tomorrow night. I think game time is 6 p.m. but am not totall sure of this. Anyway, it should be a good time.

Quick notes on other upcoming events--our block will be having its block party August 1. We missed the chance to get a city jumping jack for free, but if any readers know someone who can rent us one for a couple of hours we would be interested in talking with them. We expect to have basketball, soccer (I think), a blessing of some sort from Holy Cross/IHM and perhaps an art activity. A neighbor will DJ in the evening. The kids are thinking up games they can organize among themselves.

Special thanks to a number of local groups who have donated food or school supplies. The Su Casa Catholic Worker has large numbers of frozen hamburgers and buns left from the Fourth of July, plus a new arrival of beverages. Ald. Joann Thompson will provide chips and some beverage, and we are hoping to get hot dogs again this year from Rep. Esther Golar. Her office put us in touch with the 9th District CAPS implementation office, which may also be able to help. Park Federal donated bags and pens for our school supply kits. NHS may also be able to help with that. No Manches has agreed to donate some t-shirts as game prizes and Cafe Cedahlia will also help with refreshments. Meanwhile, Jay-Z's auntie and I have been hitting the back to school sales for pencils, rulers, scissors, folders, etc. A couple of neighbors have said they would help kick in more substantial amounts toward the expenses, and we'll probably go door-to-door and ask folks for a few bucks to help with the DJ (who's a lot cheaper than the person we got last year--whew!).

We may still be looking for someone to coach soccer and could use a high school or college student to supervise kids' activities like a bicycle race, water balloon toss, etc. (I would do this but at 8+ months pregnant I'm trying to limit how much physical activity I'll have to do day-of-event.)

Camp Marshfield Goes Mobile, Part II

So today was supposed to be another trip to the Growing Home urban farm at 58th and Wood, but between the drizzle and a last-minute meeting, I ended up having West Town Bikes deliver again. Instead, I took five girls with me to Merceria Maria on 47th Street near Wood. It's a sewing/craft store with a lot of decorations for weddings and baby showers. The girls like to do craft projects, so I figured I could invest $20-$25 in their efforts and they would be less bored now that the summer community arts program at Chavez is over.

"So here's your challenge," I told them. "You have about 20 dollars total to spend, and you want to figure out how to get the most out of it." At first they were pretty set on dividing that into four dollars apiece and each picking out stuff they wanted for their own projects. Before we left, Youngest Brady Girl was saying, "Wait. I could go back to my house and ask my dad for some money."

"No, honey, that's not the point," I told her. "Your mom and dad have enough things to spend money on--food, gas, the house."

"Yeah, the house is expensive," said her older sister. I gather the family is thinking about trying to refinance their mortgage. Her mom has taken a part time job--night shift at a laundry on weekends, Thursday through Sunday. She works 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. I think it sounds killer hard just because it's night shift and she has five kids in the house (granted some of them are teens and working this summer). One of the girls said her mom likes it because it's not hard work and the money is good--$890 a month. The girls all have to be very quiet in the house on the days their mom sleeps in before she goes to work.

So we walked over to the craft store and talked about snakes on the way there. We went past the hole in the viaduct where the garden snake lives, which sparked the discussion. Ines said she was taking a shortcut to McKinley Park (if I weren't pregnant I'd walk with her one day to see how she gets there) when she saw a really big, fat garden snake and she got scared and ran. We were all laughing about how the guys at the farm told us there were lots of snakes on the viaduct at 58th Street last week, but they didn't tell us that until after we came down, so the girls got a little scared after the fact.

When we got to the sewing/craft store the girls took a long time checking out the inventory and admiring the pretty shower decorations. They eventually began to understand what I was saying about pooling their money--for example, if they bought larger bags of beads and shared them, it might be cheaper than buying individual bags. But I don't think they could all agree on a color scheme, so it ended up being a mix of larger and smaller bags. Sarah got very interested in the felt squares and foam boards. Ines' little sister had her own project in mind that required a single piece of something that was part of a larger shower object (they sell it in pieces and the owner was OK with just selling her the one part). Ines and her two cousins were pretty set on making bead bracelets, I think.

But they kept having these secret conferences and giggling in the corner of the store. I knew they were talking about making baby-related things for me--not actual stuff for the baby, but little showery-type things. Once they had their items picked out, we took a minute before going to the counter to estimate how much everything would cost. Each girl had an armful of items she had picked out and we estimated their costs. Most of the girls had it figured out before I even asked, but when we got to Youngest Brady Girl, her face was a blank and she shrugged. Her sister, with a slightly exasperated air of 'do I have to do this for you again?' grabbed the beads out of her hands, looked at the price, rounded it up and started calculating. (By the way, youngest Brady Girl's mom is no dummy-she voluntarily put her youngest in academic summer school this summer. Hopefully our trip was a little nudge in the direction of the idea that math actually helps you in real life.) When we added everyone's items together, we thought it would come in between 20 and 25 dollars. (We didn't figure the sales tax--since I guess it's still an easy, and outrageous, 10 percent, we could have.)

Anyway, we went to the counter and it came out to be something like $22.60. The owner gave us a couple of discounts and threw in a freebie, probably because he's nice and could see I was treating the girls, and maybe also because it was a fairly large order of small, random items. (I"m sure he and his wife make their real money on the shower goodies.)

"I was afraid it was going to be like 30 or 40 dollars," Ines said as we left the store.

"If it had been that high I would have made you put some stuff back," I said. "But you came in right where I thought you would. Good work shopping and estimating!"

"It's hard deciding when there are so many choices," she said later.

"Yeah, sometimes that's the hardest part about shopping," I replied.

When we got home, the girls had a craft fest out on my back porch. They brought over stuff from home so they could make flowers out of tissue paper and pipe cleaners. They also made cards out of construction paper as well as some of the felt. And yes, the cards were in shades of blue and said "It's a boy." Ines made me one with blue and purple felt hearts that said, "I'm always here when you need help." I'll take her up on that. She's 13 and the oldest of six; I was her age when I had my first babysitting gig (with a toddler, not a newborn, but I had learned baby stuff on my youngest sister). I wouldn't leave her alone with the baby until he's older, but she's definitely top of my list of candidates for mother's helper this fall.

Meanwhile, Peter Pan's youngest sister, Youngest Brady Boy and Angel were running around in the yard chasing each other. So we had about 10 kids out back, including the bun in the oven. As the crafts wound down, a couple of Brady Girls wanted to feed the composter. So I looked in the fridge and found some bagged broccoli florets that had seen better days. They dumped them in, then they wanted to mix and water everything. Oldest Brady Boy had stopped by at this point, and he had the longest reach, so he got in there with a trowel and mixed everything up. Then they watered it with the hose.

Around that time we also got a very special guest--the first appearance in my back yard of Baby D, Sarah's five-or-six-month-old niece. Tia Sarah, who's nine, and Baby D's four-year-old big sister brought her over in a stroller. Baby D was very quiet and watched everybody with her big eyes. She was very patient with all the attention from the girls. Youngest Brady brought over a toy accordion and Tia Sarah tried playing it for Baby D. "Sometimes she turns around suddenly if you make noise," Sarah said.

They also tried getting her attention by calling her name. Sometimes she responds and sometimes she doesn't, Sarah and Baby D's big sister told me. Then Baby D's big sister tried waving one of the little rattles from the craft store at her. She wanted to hold it. "Don't let her put it in her mouth," I said. "It's too little-she could choke on it."

Of course, once in Baby D's hand, it went to her mouth in an instant. One of the Brady girls swiped it and handed it back to D's sister. Since she's only four, she started to show it to her again, and Baby D started to cry in frustration.

"Don't let her see it," I said. "Watch, she'll forget about it." One of the girls hid it, and I started playing a different game with Baby D, just waving my fingers at her or something. She stopped crying within seconds. "Right now she thinks it just disappeared for good," I told them. "When she gets older she will realize it still exists, and then she won't stop crying for something she wants right away if you take it from her." I got a kick out of explaining object permanence in pretty basic terms to the girls.

Shooting Last Thursday Night

Sorry, I'm behind the times. Just spotted this story from the Chicago Sun Times. The link will stop working by Friday April 24, so the gist of it is below.

Juan Cazares, 14, was shot and killed Thursday night at the corner of 50th and Wood, near Cornell Square Park, where he had just finished playing a basketball game. I appreciate reporter Annie Sweeney's pains to make clear that this kid was a human being and that this neighborhood is working hard to reduce violence. She's done a lot of reporting on this neighborhood and it shows.

However, I do have to make a comment based on my experience with kids who have left school for one reason or another. Juan was a student at Richard Milburn Alternative High School. Last I knew it was primarily serving students who had been expelled from Chicago Public Schools, so although the piece portrays Juan as a nice kid, I'm sure he was a complicated kid, too. Don't get me wrong; that doesn't mean he should have been killed. Nobody, especially nobody 14 years old, deserves to die. But if there's one thing I've learned from living her for nearly five years, everything is a lot more complicated than it looks on the surface.

My prayers go out to Juan and his family. I'm sure he was a lot like Joey and the other boys I know over here on our block, which isn't very far away from his home or from the corner where he died. It's stories like this that make me really nervous about raising a kid, especially a boy, here. It's so easy to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's also easy for teenage hijinks to get out of hand with terrible, even fatal consequences.

That last point is what it turns out the pushup showdown on Saturday was all about. After the pushup contest ended, I went to the barbecue next door and Peter Pan's uncle told me how it all got started. The older men in the crowd, Yup-yup included, were trying to make a point to the young boys about staying out of trouble--that tagging and gangbanging are not how you prove your manhood. "It's not like I'm a saint--I did my little things when I was their age, too, but somebody has to show them right from wrong," Peter Pan's uncle said.

A woman sitting by the grill told me she has a seven-year-old son. She said, "I already told him, if I see you trying to join a gang, I'm going to take a baseball bat to you myself. If anybody's going to hurt you like that, it's going to be me, not some little gangbanger." She was referring to the gang initiation rite known as "violation in," where to join you have to endure a beating from the gang. It's like frat hazing on steroids.

I'm just fascinated that Yup-yup got in on the "don't do it" message. It's too bad most of those young boys probably aren't connecting the dots between what they're up to now and guys like Yup-yup and even Tony. Those thugs who live to be old thugs never die, they just end up hustling and washing cars and doing other people's yard work, when they aren't locked up.

Housing Resource Fair Next Saturday

On Saturday April 18, Rep. Esther Golar and Neighborhood Housing Services will host a Housing Resource Fair at John Hope College Prep, 5515 S. Lowe. Registration starts at 9 a.m. and the event runs from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Aid for homeowners facing foreclosure and public safety responses to the growing number of vacant houses in the neighborhood will be discussed.

I heard recently that over 500 homes were lost to foreclosure in Back of the Yards in 2008.

To RSVP for the event, call Rep. Golar's district office at 773-925-6580.

5200 S. Wolcott Report

Today was a nice day--the sign on Park Federal said it was 65 degrees late this afternoon--so I decided it was a good day to take that stroll over to 5200 Wolcott and check out the scene. As our commenter reported, there are quite a few vacant lots over there. It was pretty quiet when I walked the block--there was a hoop on the east side of the street, but no one was playing ball. Over on Honore a bunch of little kids were shooting at a hoop, and older kids were playing in the street south of 51st on Wood.

The most striking feature of the south end of the 5200 block of South Wolcott is the giant vacant lot on the west corner. It's full of trash. There are more vacant lots everywhere south of 51st than north of, but there's a whole new house going up at the south end of 5100 S. Wolcott, so that was nice to see happening.

I saw maybe half a dozen people--three teenage girls and a younger boy--plus some older guys on the east side of the street --but everything was quiet and I felt perfectly safe.

On the way over, the block that really impressed me was the 5200 block of South Honore. They have a block club street sign at the north end of the block, an older Latino guy was picking up trash at the corner, and an African American man and woman (not sure if they were a couple or just neighbors--I kinda thought just neighbors) were chatting on the sidewalk and made the effort to greet me. That's where the little kids were taking turns shooting at a hoop--boys and girls, which doesn't always happen when it's basketball.

I talked with the guy picking up trash for a couple of minutes. "This is a really nice block here," I said.

"We try," he told me. "I've been here 30 years."

I told him I lived over on Marshfield. He asked how long I've been here.

"It'll be five years this summer," I said. I could see he was pleased and surprised.

Anyway, driving through the Wolcott block in broad daylight didn't seem like it would be any problem to me. But if I wanted to talk to people, I'd probably go over to Honore and see if any grownups outside seemed friendly.

Big Picture High School Fundraiser March 27

Big Picture is holding a series of events this spring, with the goal of raising $10,000 in scholarship money for its last graduating class.

The kickoff event will be held March 27, 9 p.m. to midnight, at Soiree, 2438 N. Lincoln. For $35, you get a wristband that entitles you to appetizers and a premium open bar featuring Grey Goose, Ketel One and Bacardi. A portion of the wristband proceeds will go to the Big Picture scholarship fund.

A Taste of Spring in the Hood

It's a bit warmer today, and Picasso, Joey and Oldest Brady Boy are playing basketball out on my parking pad. Joey's hoop is rigged up from his yard next door in such a way that they can shoot at it from the parking pad. I hear the "thump, thump, thump" of the ball and their voices as I'm typing.

Picasso and Joey bumped into me on the street about an hour ago and asked what was going on with the Su Casa mural project. I called over there but we had to leave a message.

Meanwhile, the graffiti wars rage on over by the viaduct at 49th and Marshfield. Some big black tagging happened recently; I could see it from a block away. Frankly I didn't have the energy to call 311, so I turned the corner and walked west on 50th for a while instead. I'll probably call tomorrow. The traffic circle looks terrible, too. There's beer cans and plastic bags all over it, and I didn't have the energy to pick them up.

There's a lot going on right now in my personal life that is taking a great deal of energy, so I don't have a lot left to give to the neighborhood or to this blog right now. In another month or so I may be ready to post more regularly. Thanks for your patience.