Postponing Chicago's violence

Here is an excerpt from my final piece from the Academy of Alternative Journalism. To read more go to: http://aan.org/aaj2009/campers/user/maryandom/

On a mild summer July day, Jermaine walks me through his CeaseFire beat of West Garfield Park— a place dotted with foreclosed homes and scraggly fenced lots. Less than a decade ago West Garfield was dubbed one of the deadliest neighborhoods to be a kid, where Chicago children were twice as likely to die from accidents, abuse or shootings.

Jermaine watches everything, he knows everyone and his phone serves as a hotline for residents who tip him off to simmering conflicts.

“What’s good, lil homie?” he says to a towering guy with furry cornrow braids who doesn’t crack a smile. He strolls past an overgrown weed lot littered with trash, and past his former elementary school.

Walking with Jermaine through the neighborhood, it’s clear that he’s something of a local celebrity, partly due to a cameo appearance he made on the History Channel’s “Gangland” documentary, which chronicled some of America’s most notorious street gangs, but also because of his former occupation as a drug dealer.

He waves to the grandmothers of the neighborhood who smile sweetly from their porches. One chubby kid pounces on his back and he wrestles him to the ground.

“Illy, Illy. I saw you on TV yesterday,” one kid clamors. The others chime in: “Me too!. Me too!”

“Everybody knows me,” Jermaine says, showing flashes of his old drug dealer bravado.. “My senior year Googie [a fellow dealer] and I brought a bundle of $1,000 bills, tied it with a rubber band and threw it around like a football.

It is the sort of over-the-top exploit that drug dealing heroes are made of, especially in a part of town where few people hold regular 9-to-5 jobs.

“I used to love selling drugs,” Jermaine confesses. .“If that’s what all your friends are doing, you’re gonna do it too,” he says. “In like one hour I made $90. I was happy.”

He rolls up his shirt sleeve revealing a tattoo mapped out on his biceps, with a BH.

“It stands for Bogus Hustlers or BraveHarts,” he says of the loosely-formed gang in his neighborhood that gained him notoriety.

At the age of 16, or 17 Jermaine was a well-known drug dealer and a BraveHart. He dropped out of Marshall High School in his senior year to focus on making money. He says he owned three cars: a Lumina, a LeSabre and a ’93 Grand Prix. The rides and his flashy wardrobe earned him the street name “Illy Mac” because he says the girls would swoon over him.

He is frank about the entrepreneurial attitude of the local hustler. “It’s not a 9-5 regular job; you can’t get fired, it doesn’t matter if you’re late,” he says. “You wake up, sell some drugs, get some liquor, get a girl, and go to the club. And the next day you do it all over again.”

But the life had its perils. Early in 2005 his friend Tron was shot to death. A couple months later another friend, Tron Bone, was killed, a couple blocks of where Jermaine and I walk today. Like many murders in Chicago, they appeared as a two sentence mentiosn in the local papers. “To this day I don’t know what happened,” he says.

Yet he maintains that there was no life-changing epiphany that made him turn his back on the hustler’s life. He simply says he saw a way out when an older, ex-felon named Reginald “Akeem” Berry gave him a job handing out flyers for CeaseFire.

“It feels crazy because a couple years back I was into this violence,” he says. “Sometimes I feel like shoot’em, fuck’em I don’t know them, but I gotta think that ain’t me no more.”


***
A white Oldsmobile makes a slow turn into the courtyard of the elementary school. It circles around twice. Ten minutes later a familiar fixture: a blue and white squad car follows the same route. Jermaine fixes his eyes on the car.

“We don’t mess with the cops. PERIOD,” he says. “People don’t want to talk to the cops.”

Once the Chicago police are called on the scene of a shooting, Jermaine and other violence interrupters wait in the background. Distancing themselves from the police, gives them a certain level of credibility they wouldn’t have otherwise.

It’s something of a high wire act, being a violence interrupter. “I’m not a police officer,” Jermaine says. “I don’t have a vest. I’m putting my life on the line.”

A day in Ceasefire for Jermaine could be a “good day or a fucked up day” he says. “Sometimes there is a war going on and you have to jump in the middle. It’s hard to tell a man- not to shoot at someone after he was shot at.”

On a traffic light post, a red CeaseFire sticker reads: Stop. Killing. People- East Garfield with a hotline number to call.

A scrawny older black man and a heavyset black woman wearing a gray miniskirt are screaming at the top of their lungs. With his face two inches from hers, the man calls the woman a bitch. At this point, three young kids crowd around the commotion.

“See this is what I’m talking about,” Jermaine says. He stands around waiting, hoping he doesn’t have to step in. Luckily nothing happens. The woman storms off. “Old stupid son of a bitch,” she hollers. Jermaine steps back.

“If a man is fighting his woman,” he says. “He don’t want anybody in his business.”

Despite his work with CeaseFire, Jermaine admits that it’s difficult staying on the straight and narrow path. Since CeaseFire went through its funding issues with the state, he has been scraping by financially, but resisting the temptation to sell drugs. Instead he works a part-time job at a printing press on the West Side specializing in R.I.P memorialized T-shirts, obituaries and flyers. He thinks about his meager paycheck, mentally calculating how much it will be: $8 an hour, 25 hours a week, he admits it isn’t much to live on.

“I’m ashamed,” he says. “But don’t put that in the story.” He mumbles something under his breath about “making more on the block.”

He still hangs out on the block with his unreformed friends and still manages to dress fashionably (Coogi brand jeans and polo with matching rainbow Jordans) except he doesn’t gang bang or sell drugs, even if he understands why many people do.

“Some people can’t wait two weeks to get paid,” he says adamantly. “They wanna get paid now.”

Although, Jermaine has long given up his hustling he still speaks with a gang-banger’s machismo about growing up on the tough West Side. When comparing other urban areas gripped by violence such as: South East D.C. or East Baltimore, he brags, “Chicago is a fucked up place,” he says. “They ain’t got nothing on us. If I were there and I gang-banged I’d take over that city.”

But in more reflective moments, he thinks about how far he’s come. CeaseFire may not provide the creature comfort or the status that gang-banging and drug dealing once afforded him, but it has given him perspective on the futility of his former life. “Being out in the street you think you know everything,” he chuckles. “But you really don’t know shit.”

Another Chicago student victim of violence

A cover story in The New York Times today highlighted the Chicago Public School’s effort to curb youth violence. Instead of a traditional approach, Ron Huberman, chief officer of public schools is using data analysis to predict and pinpoint potential victims. The city also announced a $30 million project targeting 1,200 high school students identified as high-risk victims of gun violence, providing them with full-time mentors and part-time jobs.

I was disturbed to read about Derrion Albert, the 16-year-old Chicago high school student beaten to death with wood planks by South Side gang members. The school year has barely started and three young people have already died. Again Chicago is in the national spotlight not for the Olympics but for its numbing violence.

Here are few recent headlines from the Chicago Tribune:

•Boy, 16, found dead on Far South Side
•Cops: Teen stabbed mother's boyfriend
•What (Not) To Do With $38M In Violence Prevention Funding Slain student, 17, is mourned
•Chicago school violence: District rushes to put anti-violence plan in place as gunfire claims new victims


This summer I had the amazing opportunity to spend some time with the folks on the frontline of Chicago’s violence problem: Carl Bell, a well-respected psychiatrist, Tio Hardiman, director of CeaseFire, an anti-violence coalition and Jermaine Rhodes, a 21-year-old CeaseFire violence interrupter.

Jermaine, the young man who I interviewed for this piece asked me why I wanted to write a story about his West Side neighborhood.

“Your story, you know. It’s important,” I told him. “The world needs to hear it.” Seconds later, I felt stupid for my shallow and idealistic answer.

Even after I wrote my story Jermaine and I knew his life wouldn't change drastically because of it. The ‘hood would still be the ‘hood and he would still be wrapped up in it.

“Well tell the world this,” Jermaine said. “Chicago is a fucked up place,” Those words hit me in my gut and I remember walking past scraggly lots with worn men hunched over on milk crates. I knew what Jermaine was talking about.

TEZA- A MUST SEE FILM

On Friday evening I saw the film Teza at the Avalon Theater directed by famed Ethiopian-America director Haile Gerima (Sankofa).

Teza tells the story (mainly through flashbacks)of Anberber, a young man who leaves his small Ethiopian village to study medicine in Germany in the early 70's. Anberber is swept up in the political tide of Socialism, black power and nationalism. He returns to a new Ethiopia freed from Selassie's autocratic monarchy. Energized, Anberber along with his fellow expats return as dedicated communists to help their country only to discover the revolution is just as corrupt. Along the way, he is beaten almost to death by a racist mob in Germany, falls in love with a woman branded a social pariah, and discovers why Ethiopia has called him back.

My description didn't do the film justice. It was heart-breaking, beautiful and bittersweet. Just watch it.

At the end of the showing, Gerima and some of the actors took questions from the crowd. Gerima spoke about his personal struggles on getting the 14-year project off the ground and finding support outside of the major studios. I remember leaving the theater with my heart heavy and smiling. It was that GOOD!

Here is a review in the Washington Post about TEZA

Ahhhh the life of a temp

What a busy and random week! I'm been on my hustle and grind working the illustrious life of an office temp. I know there is a negative stigma attached to being a temp, but I love the unpredictabilty of it all. I mean you're here one day and gone the next. I've worked for some great organizations- answering phones, printing 400 pieces of paper (only to realize I forgot to print it double-sided) and conducting political surveys on corrupt politicians in Jersey. I've had the phone (closed) hung up on me probably 500 times this week. But I don't take it personally. As someone once said, "It builds character."

I am now an expert at copier paper jams and thinking of creative ways to spend five hours of my life. Last week, I read the New York Times, USA Today and wrote an opinion column on "why it sucks to be a young reporter." I also separated the colored paper clips from the regular ones. jk.

I can't wait until next week--all the adventures. Btw- The season premiere of The Office wasn't that impressive.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell

One thing I ABSOLUTELY love about about DC is all the FREE events I get to do. So I hit up the National Press Club about attending a screening of the Liberian documentary, "Pray the Devil Back to Hell" and they were gracious to let me attend. The film was a heart-breaking, inspiring tale about a group of women who wanted peace in war-torn Liberia.

The funniest part of the documentary is when the women in the peace group told their husbands they would abstain from sex unless they were on their side. The power women hold is amazing.

Check out a screening: www.praythedevilbacktohell.com

I'm Back in the DMV

That is DC-Maryland-Virginia.It feels good to be back in DC. I have fond memories of our nation's capital. It's been two years since I was working in downtown DC (near George Washington University/Foggy Bottom) at The Chronicle of Higher Education. The city has an energy like none other. I can't wait to eat Ethiopian food on U street, check out the new museums (I live next door to where Fredrick Douglas lived) and become reacquainted with one of my favorite cities. I'm staying in the heart of the city, one block away from the Supreme Court and Union station. I heart DC METRO...

Chicago's West Side/ Lupe's Food and Liquor

Tracy McGrady in Darfur documentary

Amazing documentary of Tracy McGrady travelling through refugee camps in Chad/Darfur region. I cried, this is really depressing. It hits you in the gut. It reminds me of my journey to Eritrea when I was 17--all those smiling habasha kids and playing soccer to dusk in the rugged countryside. http://www.hulu.com/watch/93512/3-points

Arts Story

Rudy Garcia finally has a call. A condominium in Lincoln Park has been hit, and Garcia has been summoned to work his magic – scrubbing spray paint off the facades of any building marred by “taggers” and “bombers.”

Garcia rolls up to the condo in his white, unmarked ice cream-looking truck with a duct-taped passenger seat and a rusty, gutted interior. He had a much nicer truck, but that was before the City of Chicago swooped in on his turf. He had to sell the shiny, new truck two years ago, get rid of his four employees and close his West Side office to cut costs. Now he’s broke and his graffiti removal business is failing.

Garcia is the original “Graffiti Blaster,” not to be confused with Mayor Daley’s free-of-charge graffiti removal service, which goes by the same name. But Garcia maintains that he is the original graffiti blaster, and he has papers of incorporation dating back to 1985 that he says prove he was the first to come up with the idea.

But eight years after Garcia hung out his shingle, the mayor stepped in and stole his concept and his company name. Under the Daley’s “Graffiti Blasters” program, business owners and residents don’t have to pony up the cost to clean up a tagger’s mess. The city will do it for free.

As a result Garcia’s business has all but dried up. Now he begs for work, scouring the graffiti-plastered walls of condos and businesses throughout the area, looking for crumbs the mayor’s folks may have left behind or were too busy to get to. “I’m struggling,” he says, digging out some spare coins in his pocket.

But today is a new day and an opportunity to make a couple hundred bucks.

Garcia hops out of the truck, he has owlish eyebrows furrowing as he surveys the damage. He is wearing blue jean overalls and black elastic belt, riding below his round belly. He examines the scene like a CSI detective. His black hair is slicked back with gel, and he has a graying goatee. He looks about 60.

“I’m around 50 years old,” he says, smirking. It’s the only thing Garcia isn’t frank about.

“Lechuga,” is scrawled in purple spray-paint on the sidewalk. “That means lettuce in Spanish,” he says. On the beige brick wall facing the street, an “L” and “K” are sandwiched in between a purple crown. Garcia pulls out his camera and snaps photos of the crime scene. Years on the job and Garcia knows how to decipher the encrypted messages of the gang bangers like an urban archaeologist. “This is Latin Kings,” he says. He eyes another message, and says grimly, “This means someone will be killed, it’s retaliation.”

On the limestone corner of the wall Lechuga signs off on his canvas.

“This will be harder to take out, the paint is embedded in there,” he says examining the drip pattern. He contemplates solvents and chemicals to blast it away. He runs his fingers along the grainy brick material and the smooth limestone.

Garcia tries to call the tenant to give them an estimate. No answer. He calls the building owner on the FOR SALE sign, but no one picks up. He paces around for 30 minutes, it’s a waiting game. He could go home but he doesn’t want to waste his gas, plus the mayor’s Graffiti Blasters will take away his business if he doesn’t act now. The gray storm clouds aren’t helping either. “It needs to be at least 75 degrees, the hotter the better so the heat can penetrate the thick purple paint,” he says.

Two college-aged females approach. “You must be Graffiti Blasters,” one woman says. They seem pleased he has arrived. “I am the original Graffiti Blaster, not part of the city,” Garcia hands them each a business card. “This is my web site, you can see my work.”

But they are confused; they think Garcia works with the city. He now spends 15 minutes talking about how the mayor stole his name and business. “Yeah, yeah,” the woman says, pretending to care. “How much would something like this cost to clean up?”

“I need the work so bad, I will lower the price to $350,”he says, hustling. “That’s a gift… I got 20 different chemicals I use.”

“Let me get back to you, I have to talk this over with the condo association,” she says.

Garcia heads back to his truck defeated.

“Someone calls me and when I come out there, they think I’m the Graffiti Blasters,” he says. “I’ve just lost 500 bucks.”

His phone rings for another job on the North Side.

“What an eyesore,” he shakes his head griping about everything he sees wrong with graffiti: the declining property values, the ghettoizing of a community, the utter disrespect of youth, “And for some little punk to mess it up,” he says. “It’s just a shame.”

Somewhere in the city, Jose “Loony” is planning his next conquest. He’s a bomber, a graffiti writer addicted to getting his name anywhere and everywhere. We agreed not to use his last name to protect his identity.

“The bomber mentality is this,” Loony says: “Get your name out there and graffiti everything: the billboards, water towers, trains.

Loony is a veteran, 24, and he’s already been arrested three times. But he loves the thrill and danger associated with bombing. “Yeah I’m obsessed with it, imagine all this stuff in my lungs,” he says. “I probably have bad kidneys and shit.”

On a Monday afternoon Loony drove two hours to a Home Depot in the suburbs to get spray paint. Spray-paint sales have been banned within the city since 1995 in an effort to curb graffiti vandalism. But that didn’t deter this career graffiti artist. Along with some people in his crew he stuffed backpacks full of 40 to 50 aerosol cans, enough for two to three nights of writing.

With the advent of the internet, graffiti writers have found new ways to advertise their latest masterpieces: YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace. On Chicagograffiti.com aspiring and accomplished writers post photos of their graffiti scrawled on trucks, subway trains and billboards; the more difficult and challenging the piece the more street cred they acquire.

Loony brags about his amazing feats: emblazoning “BAD” on viaducts and overpasses along the Kennedy Expressway. One drunken night his friends shimmied him 20 feet up a poll as commuters took out their cell phones to call the cops. “Doing it was pretty intense,” Loony says. “Once I climbed up. I had to [spray] it fast, do it clean and get the fuck out of there.”

His 30-man crew called BAD (Bombing All District, but also known as “Blast at Daley”) hates the “buff” — the term they use to describe the destruction of their work by any and all graffiti blasters, whether it’s the mayor’s crews or Rudy Garcia. “Chicago is the city of buff,” he says. “I guess they are doing their jobs. Somebody needs to get paid $25. Bottom-line: they’re bitches.”

***

It was 1985 when Rudy Garcia first had an epiphany. Graffiti had exploded onto the Chicago skyline. Nothing was immune: subway trains, the walls of private businesses, water towers and even rooftops became urban advertisements. Garcia saw dollar signs. Straight out of the military, he was eager to capitalize on the sudden need to clean up the mess. A former construction worker, Garcia knew every type of brick there was. To launch his business, all he needed was a unique formula that wouldn’t permanently damage buildings. He spent months reading books in the Chicago Public library and later testing his formulas on abandoned buildings hit with graffiti.

From the start, business was good for the optimistic entrepreneur; he called his company Graffiti Blasters.

“When I started this, my community looked like a ghetto,” says Garcia, who grew up in Back of the Yards. “It broke my heart.”

Garcia reminisces about a time when the money and clients were rolling in. He says he use to make up to $5,000 a day. He was flooded with calls from distraught business and home owners. “I could flip a coin. North Side or South Side. East or West,” he says. “Now I have to beg, it never used to be like this.”

In 1993, Mayor Daley launched his own graffiti removal initiative. He also called it Graffiti Blasters. Garcia sued the city for trademark infringement 14 years after he first became aware of the city’s use of the name. But by the time Garcia filed suit, the city had already cleaned 1,000,000 sites and had invested heavily in the promotion of Graffiti Blasters. The effort knocked Garcia out of competition. In February of this year, his case was dismissed. U.S. District Court Judge Milton Shadur of the Northern District of Illinois ruled in favor of the city, stating Garcia had waited too long to file his claim. He had slept on his rights.

The City of Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation declined to comment on whether they were aware of Garcia’s business before the city launched its own version of Graffiti Blasters.

Garcia insists he didn’t sleep on his rights. He shows a log of phone calls and emails – dating back to 1998 – that he sent to 50 different attorneys, some as far away as Los Angeles. None would take his case.

“It was like one man against an army,” he says.

Cruising along Western Avenue, Garcia rides with both doors open for the breeze, he looks left and right, navigating the city like a graffiti tour guide.

“There’s some work for me right there,” he says about a white van in a scraggly vacant lot.

He sputters by in his truck and he sees yet another business hit by graffiti. He stops with a sense of urgency, handing his business card to the man crushing metal inside. A well-dressed secretary comes outside. He pitches his company again: “Check out my Web site, www. Graffitiblasters.net,” he says pulling a card from his overalls.

In a dusty old saloon he once owned, Garcia stores shoeboxes full of before and after photos of the graffiti he has removed, 25 years of memories. He hoped to later the saloon into a restaurant. But his graffiti-blasting business dried up and the bank loan never came.

“My 350,000 home is going to be foreclosed,” he says. “In 90 days I’m going to be evicted. I have to start my life all over again. I can’t retire.”

Garcia keeps on pushing; he has to. His cell phone rings, somewhere on the North Side, a house has been hit on Sheffield. It’s a race against time but the original Graffiti Blaster doesn’t quit, another day another job.

THE ANATOMY OF A MUGGING

Around 3:17 AM Saturday June 13, 2009

Disclaimer: Gratuitous swearing….

It was a warm summer night in Chicago and I just got off the Blue line ‘El’ train in Wicker Park. I remember walking briskly, side-stepping the tipsy bar patrons as they spilled out into the street. I had to get home and fast. I held my purse to my side and every few minutes I eyed my surroundings. I was alert, walking in the middle of the street where it was well-lit.

Ten minutes later I bent the corner by the Karaoke lounge; the landmark I used to remind myself of where I lived.

“Hey, you know where Western street is,” a clean-cut Hispanic man said walking towards me. I inched away. “Ummm, I don’t really know,” I said pointing towards the open intersection. “But I think it’s that way.”

He retreated to the middle of the street, speaking rapid-fire Spanish on his cell phone. I turned around a few steps from my apartment, he was gone.
I pulled out my keys. I was home. I rested my headphones on my neck, the faint hip-hop music pulsating-- Lupe Fiasco’s “Real.”

‘Now which key did Erica say opens the front door? I jostled my keys and put them in the door.

He struck from behind, not saying a word. The man from the street yanked my purse so violently the strap broke. It was all a blur of raw, intense emotion. I wasn’t letting go. We wrestled for a few seconds, maybe it was a minute. I stumbled to the ground, my palms scraping the asphalt.

“My purse, GIMME back my purse muthafucka,” I screamed.

He ran so fast disappearing into the night.

For a minute, I froze. My heart was leaping out of my chest and my face was burning hot. I felt like I was half-dreaming, in the way you know something bad just happened but you don’t want to acknowledge it.

The only thing I had left were my keys and my headphones dangling on my neck. I got through the first glass door and manage to open the second door to the stairs of my apartment. Then I crumbled. I slammed my fist against my thighs, “FUCK, FUCK, FUCK,” then the tears poured like a river. I somehow make it up the steep stairwell, sobbing and cursing and praying to God.

Lord Please help me, Please help me.

I’m crying uncontrollably, my keys are shaking in my hand and I can’t open the door. I have five keys and three locks. I slumped to the foot of my door.

Get a fuckin’ hold of yourself!

Thirty-minutes later I finally get in. I slam the door shut and double-check the locks. I kick off my platform wedges and run to Querita’s room. I don’t see a lump in her bed. The apartment is clean and empty. No phone, no internet, no connection to the outside world.

No one is here I’m scared I don’t know what to do, so I pray to the only person who can hear me:

Lord help me, help me.

I lock myself in my room. I can’t breathe. I’m scared he might come back to hurt me. I feel like throwing up. I wipe the snot from my face and my tears on my black cardigan.

“I’M OKAY, I’M OKAY,” I tell myself. “He didn’t have a gun, he didn’t rape you.”

I look out the window to the pink sunrise and the stain-glass church. “Please God help me,” I said. “Why is this happening to me?” My mind starts racing and I’m worried about tomorrow. Fuck. I have no money, my stipend, my passport, my train card. I have nothing and I can’t even sleep. I hate Chicago.

Why Chicago will forever be in my heart

I came to Chicago this June excited to embark on a new journey. Mind you I’ve zigzagged across the world spending three-months in the picturesque Dolomite Mountains of Italy, made a pit-stop in the Rainy City and somehow landed this amazing gig in Chicago.
I was selected as one of eight journalism graduates for the prestigious Academy of Alternative Journalism housed at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. My summer in Chicago has made me a stronger person: I survived a mugging, I broke some metaphorical bricks and I gained the trust of a former drug dealer. I also made some amazing friends who reminded me why my heart is in the right place and profession.

This is why I love reporting:

Shout-out to Tito- The sweet Mexican man at the front desk who said all this hard work would pay off someday.