I haven’t figured out how to directly post images to the site so, forgive me; but, if you click on the hypertext a psychogeographic map of the Chicago Urban Spelunking League’s first adventure of the summer should open in another window. If you have problems please let us know.
The Infamous Ink
Do you want to fight for immigrants’ rights and economic justice?
MOBILIZEORGANIZE
Make a difference … become a member of the UNITE HERE Organizing Team working to organize hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers in hotel, casino, retail and laundry work throughout North America. Help workers stand together and fight for their rights and economic security. We are interviewing applicants for a two day intensive organizing skills workshop.
Recommended participants will have the opportunity to lead organizing campaigns in the Midwest.
UNITE HERE Local 1
2 Day Organizing Training & Evaluation
May 30th and 31st 2008
Requirements:
• Desire to fight for justice and organize the unorganized.
• Valid driver’s license.
• Excellent communication skills.
How to Apply:
Illinois applicants send resume to Lou Weeks at weeksunitehere@yahoo.com
Indiana applicants send resume to Marc Carbonneau at mr_carbonneau@yahoo.com
Minnesota applicants send resume to Martin Goff at mgoff@here17.org
For more information on UNITE HERE and its campaigns visit our website: www.unitehere.org
I really would love to list a full 365 ways to bury your head in the sand, or up your ass, but I don’t have that much time. Instead, I will explore the 3 most common and politically infamous ways of ignoring reality or lacking any grasp on the way things work here in this country.
1. Be a conservative who supports the free market but wants a border fence. These two ideas are about as incompatible as it gets. Opening up the market means opening up borders to anyone who wants to participate in the global economy; and the global economy depends on the cheap labor that immigrants provide, especially here in the States. The same people who talk about big government interfering with hard-working Americans generally use the same tone of disdain when talking about Mexicans who come up here and take away (white) Americans’ jobs. I’m sorry folks, but you just can’t have it both ways. The free market ensures that labor costs and immigration policies will be linked.
Today thousands of immigrants and their families and friends are marching through Chicago and other cities, because they want to participate in this great American experiment of democratic voting and markets. Are you going to deny them that? Well, you can’t anyway. A border fence cannot stop the flow of immigrants into this country anymore than it can stop the thousands of tons of drugs that come across as well. You’re just going to have to accept the notion that you won’t be fulfilling your life-long dream of being a bus-boy. The Mexicans have just as much of a right to be here as the Jews, Asians, Irish, and Germans that came before them. They’re not going away. Just accept it.
2. Believe that the surge is really working. I myself have fallen into this fallacy. But a temporary decrease in spectacular attacks do not prove that the strategy can work. There is no way that the surge can work. And for the inevitable idiot claims that I am somehow disrespecting the troops by saying this, I have no reason to even answer you, but the fact is that the surge is yet another impossible burden that has been placed on our troops. The reason I was opposed to this war from the beginning is because I support the troops who fight it. End of story.
The reason that the surge cannot work is because, just like the entire Iraqi mission, it is a flawed idea to begin with. Democracy cannot be forced upon people with a gun anymore than political reconciliation can be achieved through massive troop buildups. The violence has lessened since the surge began, but that’s not the question here. Without a permanent, comprehensive solution that is worked out by the IRAQIS there will be no end to this war. To expect the American soldier to keep carrying that burden while the corrupt, inept, illegitimate Iraqi government works towards “peace” is the true meaning of not supporting the troops. And for those of you who claim that we just need to give them more time, let me remind you that 5 years ago today, our President stood on the deck of a naval vessel in front of a giant banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” Don’t believe it for a second; then or now.
3. Believing that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John Mccain will truly change things. The very fact that these 3 candidates have come as far as they have proves that their interests lie with the wealthy elite, not with the average American. For all his talk of campaign finance reform, John Mccain has taken millions from PAC’s and corporations and hasn’t apologized for it. Barack Obama claims that he has stayed away from this dirty money but it’s only a twisting of terms; the truth is that he has taken far more money from corporate America than any other candidate. Hillary Clinton is about as entrenched in the Washington power structure as you can get, and all her talk about health care is hallow as hell; in 1994 she may have really meant it, but since she has taken millions of dollars from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
For hundreds of years people have been running on the platform of change and hope, and very very few of them have actually followed through. In order to affect any real change in America, we need to change the way campaigns are funded, and stop voting for a pack of bloated elephants and jackasses.
Greetings Fellow Students, Members of the Community and Infamous Ink Readers:
This Thursday, May 1st, people will turn out across the country to demonstrate and march in celebration of International Workers’ Day, to march for immigrant and labor rights, continuing the struggle of progressive movements through out the history of liberal-capitalism to effect economic and social change. Thursday’s marches are the occasion to recognize and enumerate the intolerable social and political situations enabled by that system today and to demand:
universal amnesty, equal rights in the workplace, the right to unionize, the Employee Free Choice Act, fair wages and full employment, the end of the occupation in Iraq, equal access to education, universal healthcare
CALLING ALL STUDENTS:
Leave campus to join fellow progressive labor and community organizations to
WITHHOLD LABOR and MARCH AND RALLY DOWNTOWN
Take part in a movement to change our society!
Join major events in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, San Antonio, Dallas Texas, Atlanta Ga, Phoenix, other cities in the United States and Latin America.
Meet at 11:00 am at Ashland and Ogden, and march together to Union Park for a public rally!
Here are five reasons why students of conscience should take part in Thursday’s mobilizations:
1. Student movements have played a major role in social struggles for democracy and civil rights. Students have a unique place in public discourse, as the young people in national institutions of learning, we have the task and privilege to envision and shape the future of our society.
2. Students come from communities that are effected by today’s political problems; we have friends and family who are serving in Iraq, who are threatened by deportation because they do not have legal documentation to work in this country, who do not have access to healthcare, and who labor without just compensation.
3. Students have a unique role in international political discourse. We inhabit the international institutions of higher education, and we benefit from access to funds to study and travel abroad. We study with fellow students and professors from around the world, and are thus empowered to develop a critical international perspective on political issues in this country.
4. Our ‘workplace,’ the university, is an ideal place of political discourse, we have logistical and practical tools to share information and organize ourselves that people working in other parts of society do not have access to.
5. We need to create an international community of citizens of conscience, willing to stand up and send a message to our political leaders, and the rest of society. We need to show that the American public is demanding comprehensive immigration policy reform that protects the civil and human rights of all workers, both native and foreign, who work in this country and contribute to this nation’s wealth.
The Chicago Students for a Democratic Society stand with other progressive community and labor organizations to march on May 1st.
Take a stand! Join more than 100 students across Chicago that are already planning to come out.
Please look at the following links for more information:
In solidarity,
Ben Blumburg, Ashleigh Campi, Ian Morrison
Chicago Students for a Democratic Society
The Platypus Affiliated Society
For too long I have wondered why those that rock the boat of the status quo are alienated. Most people, I believe, live lives of comfortable displeasure but are too afraid of the consequences any action against that comfortable displeasure may bring. Nothing good comes from just sitting on one’s hands and saying “eh, good enough!” Hope and change, though mocked in recent media and by bitter cynics as loaded campaign words, are very real, tangible things for which to be fought. Nothing, not a single thing, can convince me that private interests are more important than those things that liberated, thinking people demand and, when those private interests are defended by real people because they collect a paycheck from said private interests it makes me question their moral integrity. What is more important, a paycheck or liberty? What is important, a pat on the back or knowing you’ve contributed to the further liberation of people?
No one that writes, contributes or edits this news/cultural criticism blog is diluted enough to call themselves “perfect” or “righteous” but they can say they do not sell out their causes or ideas for any sort of pay. So, more to the point, this entry is an attempt to answer the question of what is more important: the private interests that string people along for pay or real tangible liberty?
No private interest should have the right to discriminate or choose not to grant any sort of due process to those individuals or movements that they deem contrary to their WASP obligations and motives. People should not be held under the thumb of or live in fear of retaliation by any private interests, especially an institution of higher education that is supposedly dedicated to the advancement of new ideas and free speech.
Readers, there is supposed to be justice for all under the law not just interpreted justice for private interests.
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE COLUMBIA COLLEGE COMMUNITY
Dear Students, Faculty, Staff and Administrators of Columbia College Chicago:
It has been brought to my attention, via the awful rumor mill that persists in the basement of the 1104 building, that a student has been banned from participating in Student Government or SOC activities for the remainder of this year and all of next. I assure you (if this is true) I have my own opinions on this issue but, for fear of retaliation by Columbia College I will refrain from sharing them in detail and simply say this: The fact that a paying student with a sterling academic record is being prevented from being the author of this generation’s culture, based on what amounts to hearsay, is a travesty. Columbia, to my knowledge and according to the rumors, never conducted a proper investigation into those incidents that led to this student being banned nor was any sort of due process granted; private “business” or not, a human being in the United States is entitled to due process, representation in any meetings or interrogations and an opportunity to appeal.
In addition to the violation of those traditions that make America a place of free people, Columbia has also ignored its own recent statements that it is to be the most student centered media arts college in the world. Being the most student centered anything means that, ideally, a strong emphasis is placed on hearing, working with, and supporting student endeavors to advance their own cause and interests. That said, the “code of conduct” is not what the students want. Students are asking for a comprehensive document that has been written by students for students, not by administrators for their lawyers and insurance companies. What the college has been doing concerning the Student Bill of Rights amounts to censorship and a clear disregard for grass-roots democratic process. If the Bill of Rights can no longer be a Student Government issue the only clear assumption I am able to make is that it now becomes a college wide issue.
I am tired of Columbia College and its blatant disregard for Constitutional Rights, American traditions and its own students’ efforts to make Columbia a shining beacon of freedom, political discourse, and art. Allow students to hear to Student Bill or Rights, if not for anything else but because it is the right thing to do.
Wondering why Columbia Hates Freedom,
Infamous Ink
The South East Environmental Task Force or SETF is a not-for-profit community advocacy group located in the Chicago neighborhood of Hegewisch. The group, in its current form, is relatively new as it developed out of several groups that were all striving for similar changes in city and state policy concerning land use, open space and rampant ecological problems. It originally started out, according the organization’s webpage, as an “arm of State Representatives Clem Balanoff’s office,” in order to coordinate the efforts of more than two-dozen community groups “to stop a garbage incinerator from being built in the area”[i]. Once the incinerators were stopped, the members of SETF “continued to function on a voluntary basis” to prevent further environmentally destructive policies and land use proposals including Mayor Daley’s proposed Lake Calumet Airport[ii].
In 1994 SETF sought and was granted an incorporated status and has continued to organize Chicago’s southeast side neighborhoods (including those of historic Pullman and Hegewisch) and urban suburbs against landfill expansions and future waste facility development; further ecological degradation of Hegewisch Marsh, Wolf Lake, Lake Calumet, the Calumet River System and other bodies of water/wetlands. SETF has also played a leading roll in promoting progressive and ecologically sustainable redevelopment of existing brownfields. In 1999 SETF was granted 501(c)3 or not-for-profit status and was able to hire a full time staff of urban planners, ecologists, researchers and lobbyists[iii].
In addition to advocating for its own members and stewards, SETF maintains a close relationship with other important community organizations, leaders, businesses and educational institutions including Chicago State University, Kent College of Law, Ford Motor Company, Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, The Sierra Club of Illinois, The Chicago Steel Heritage Project and the City of Chicago. In 2005, SETF was granted the “Environmental Hero of the Year” award by Illinois Lieutenant Pat Quinn; and, in 2006 it proved its “environmental heroism” once again by securing the first ever $750,000 National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service[iv].
The $750,000 grant was used to help fund the joint efforts of SETF, The Chicago Architectural Foundation and Ford Motor Company to further develop plans for the recently approved Ford Calumet Environmental Center located near Hegewisch Marsh. Much of the grant money went toward the removal of invasive or non-native species, the replanting of native species, biological and ecological research and community education programs. The center, once built, will act as a cultural, educational, conservation and research facility open to both the public and academics[v].
With the need for more ecological forethought in public policy and urban planning, it is good to know that organizations like SETF exist. Not only does their Executive Director, Alan Mammoser, have the southeast side’s environmental concerns close at heart but he understands the need to preserve those cultural nodes that have led to the ecological mishaps that, in turn, led to SETF’s founding. Mr. Mammoser and SETF also understand the need for communities (and especially young people) to take accountability for their own and our city’s less than sterling ecological footprint(s). According to SETF’s own mission statement they will “continue to serve both children and adults through [their] Civic and Environmental Education program[s]. [And] hope to see Southeast Side residents educated about issues that affect the health of their environment, be able to contribute to the redevelopment of the region, and respond to environmental threats”[vi].
i,ii,iii, iv, v, vi: Not Availble. “About Us.” Southeast Environmental Task Force. 2001. Chicago State University, the State of Illinois, the City of Chicago, Sierra Club. 09 Mar. 2008 .
Below in italics you will find the first draft of my Senior thesis. Please feel free to make comments or suggestions for future drafts… I have this idea, stemming from Zinn, of a democratic history of a place.
In the hustle and bustle of the post-modern global American metropolis it is easy to lose a neighborhood in the backdrop of its municipality. In the case of Hegewisch, it is less lost in the backdrop of Nature’s Metropolis as it is covered up with more tourist friendly landscapes like the Skyline, Navy Pier or North Avenue Beach. Hegewisch is not an ugly place rather, it is a place to be understood as an intricate community where the heart of Chicago’s industrial past, its polluted present and its global future lay in a unique juxtaposition.
The neighborhood is more vibrant than the “gray landscape with little vegetation” and “a clouded sky hovering over dark buildings” that is described by William Cronon in his book Nature’s Metropolis[i] and that I think exist in most people’s minds. Ask most any North Sider about the South Side and you get a description resembling that of the fifth circle of hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy; a place of murky and polluted marshes full of dark people. Or, as so eloquently put by a close friend of mine when discussing this project, “I don’t go down to the numbered streets because it’s, like, the ‘ghetto’”.
Even though most of the smokestacks that once emitted “plumes of white and unwhite steam” no longer do, the now crumbling facades of steel mills and coke plants and their subsequent ecological impacts are a constant reminder of Chicago’s (and ipso facto America’s) industrial heritage. Though Cronon recalls only one smokestack that produced the “dense orange vapor” that was formally synonymous with Chicago’s rust belt, Hegewisch is dotted with these defunct cultural nodes that are semi-permanent testaments to the world that Chicago is in fact “the city of broad shoulders.”
Ironically, many of those same smokestacks that once exhaled the greasy rust colored byproducts of industrialism and steel production have been converted to recycle scrap metal o or modified for waste disposal. The area, though most industry has moved out, still feels, looks and smells like the “old” Chicago Cronon takes us to in his book.
It is important to remember that smoke still lives in Hegewisch and that it roosts on many of the same smokestacks Cronon encountered during his childhood trips through “the City”, even though the smells and soot aren’t so greasy, and the smog not so thick, many of the repercussions of those distant and quaint collective Chicago memories are just now being realized.
The majestic and all to nationalistic spread eagle smoke, a symbol to some of Chicago’s rebirth after the great fire of 1871 and to others of America’s economic and industrial superiority at the turn of the 20th century, has raised a brood of problems that are beginning to rear their heads and are increasingly difficult to handle.
Those smokestacks that once produced both white smoke and unwhite smoke now sit crumbling are still signifiers of urban blight and epitomize a “ghetto” to some, while on the other hand, there exists a handful of us that see brownspace, superfund sites and rusty smokestacks as great of historical importance to the Western identity as the Greek Parthenon or the Basilica di San Lorenzo.
Downtown Hegewisch, at first glance looks like any largely working class community. The one way streets are lined with classic brown stone bungalows, some local diners and businesses, churches and the several decaying relics of what was once one of the most highly industrialized regions in the world. Though not as aesthetically striking as the Basilica di San Lorenzo, the banks, bars, barbers’ and sandwich shops resembles something more out American Graffiti[ii] than Fred Fisher’s (later covered by Frank Sinatra) 1922 hit “Chicago”. It is an area pocked by low-wetland forests and the marshes that much of Chicago is built over. Only a few miles away from downtown lies Lake Calumet which is naturally fed by the three branches of the Calumet River System which is largely responsible for the incorporation of Chicago in 1837 and the later urbanization and industrialization of this southeastern corner of the city. The regions topography, which is a direct result of the recession of the large glaciers that covered much of North America at the start of the most recent ice age, has directly impacted the history and people of the area.
It is because Hegewisch acts as such a unique intersection of politics, geography, ecology, and history that it is like a low hanging fruit, ripe to be picked as a cultural text. The relics of industrialism and one way streets lined with brown stone bungalows have stories that often go muffled or buried in the footnotes of Chicago’s often more exciting and romantic historical narratives.
The interaction of all these unique quirks and odd clips of local history are overwhelming, to throw issues of public space into the mix can make it just plain confusing. Issues of land ownership and responsibility (accountability?) constantly come up in discussions with people working close to the place. There is a lot of unused real estate in CICSD, much of it lots where factories once stood or a crumbling few still stand. An in depth political-economy analysis would reveal that there is a lot of capital and clout riding on these brownfields. Many of the areas that have been “reclaimed”- used here in the contemporary environmental health context- for human use have been privatized. For example, parts of a garbage dump (another superfund site) have been reclaimed as a country club. In a city as large as Chicago, and given it’s seedy past, space, even seemingly worthless space, is worth top dollar
One is hard pressed to take a step anywhere in Hegewisch without feeling the heavy yoke of history and ecology thrust upon them. From glacial Lake Michigan to the streets named after French missionaries to the decaying cultural nodes of America’s industrial heritage, Hegewisch will not let you forget that human beings are forever woven into the tapestry of landscapes narrative.
Greetings Readers:
Some exciting news! A coalition of community and anti-war organizations have been banded together in order to lobby Chicago’s city council to adopt the “Sanctuary City” resolution being adopted by cities and towns around the country. The version currently being proposed to be presented to the city council can be found on TheInfamousInk.com or by clicking here.
Also, we are looking for more contributors from around the globe to create an internet free-speech co-op of sorts. If you are interested don’t hesitate to send me, the Infamous Administrator, your contributions.
Routes, Not Places
Ecological and historical context of community aesthetics and identity
Environmental issues, specifically environmental justice, have become a focal point of both politics and the economy. What is lacking in this global discourse on the human element in ecology is its affects on the aesthetics of cities, the cultures of their residents and what to do with the vast expanses of brownfields and crumbling industrial infrastructures. A prime example of this oversight exists in Chicago.
Using political-economic and geo-ecological analysis, this project addresses the devastating effects that both the boom and bust of America’s industrial economy have had on the Chicago neighborhood of Hegewisch. Like J.B Jackson in his essay Several American Landscapes; I want to be able to interweave historical narrative and context with specific cultural nodes–the Acme Coke Plant, superfund site, Memorial Day massacre statue–and their effects on the Chicago neighborhood of Hegewisch’s identity and ecology.
Keywords: Cultural Landscape Narrative, Urban Aesthetics, Neighborhood Identity, Chicago, Ecology
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