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books, children, community, Uncategorized

The Booklady’s Kids

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As some of you know, I’m the Booklady in my neighborhood. When we first moved here, I started giving away books to the kids who live here. It’s an easy thing to do and very rewarding. I go to thrift shops and buy books, children’s and young adult, usually for around twenty cents each. That means I can get fifty books for about ten dollars. I keep a couple of boxes of books just inside my front door and, when a kid comes up on the porch to get one, I haul them out and let her choose one book.
The one-book-a-day rule is important in this whole business. I want the kids to value the books, even though they’re free. So at first some of them put a lot of manipulative energy into trying to get more than one book. I’ve even had kids try to hide an extra book under a T-shirt. They also insist the second book is for their brother. I tell them their brother can come get his own book. (I make occasional exceptions for “baby” brothers and sisters, but they only get baby books.)

One little guy from next door, about four years old, tries to stonewall me. He comes over for a book and takes it home. Then he comes over again, just a little while later, and claims he hasn’t been there that day and didn’t get a book. You can’t shake him. One time, after I kept explaining that I knew he’d already got a book, he looked at me fiercely and said, “I need a book!”

Well, I could certainly sympathize with that sentiment, but I didn’t cave. I’ve had ten years experience in not caving, and it’s a good strategy. Now kids bring new kids to the porch and explain the rules to them. Other Booklady rules are simply what I grew up with. No grabbing, hitting, cursing, or tattling. And no skates on the porch. (I don’t want to be responsible for any broken limbs.)

Over the years, some of the kids have become friends. One of the dearest was Julian. When he first started coming by he was probably seven or eight. He and his friend Giovanni came to get books for a good while. Then I made the mistake one day of giving them each a marble. They started asking for marbles every time they came. I had to make myself forget about the fact that I had a large jar of marbles and could easily have made them happy. The Booklady is about books, not marbles.

After a while, Julian started coming by to talk. When I opened the door and asked whether he wanted a book, he’d say, “No.”

I’d say, “Do you want to sit on the step?”

He’d shrug, and we’d sit down. Then we’d talk. I learned that Julian had six sisters. His mother had kicked out his father, apparently after he threw her down the stairs. Julian yearned for him. I suspect Julian was a shoplifter, and I know he was a con artist; he told me that school was really easy. All you had to do was pretend you were dumb and they’d put you in a class where you didn’t have to do anything.

When Mac Austin and I were working on America’s Children, one of our print documentaries, I gave the book kids disposable cameras and asked them to take pictures of each other. Two of the pictures actually made it into the book. They were both taken by Carolina, who showed a real talent for composition. She was kidnapped and impregnated when she was fifteen, and I never saw her after that, so I don’t know how things worked out for her.

I have a lot of other stories about the kids, but I won’t go into all of them here.  All of you who are teachers have those stories, too. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about being the Booklady, in case some of you want to give it a try in your neighborhood.

gangs

The Senora and the Plumber

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Yesterday, the battle against gangs in our neighborhood entered a new phase because of a smart, brave woman and a plumber.

Maria, down at 3506, had the idea to get permit parking in our neighborhood. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Chicago, this simply means that people who are residents of a block get stickers to put on their windshields, and cars without stickers are banned from parking on the block for all or part of the day. I believe this was originally instituted because of parking problems near busy commercial or entertainment areas, like Rush Street or Broadway. But it works just as well to keep gangbangers from parking their vans, opening the side doors and setting up camp on the parkway. Or pulling in and hanging out until a drug customer drives up and begins negotiations.

Now, Michael and I have been working against the gangs for eleven years and we never thought of this. Olga and Obed have fought the good fight for eighteen and they never thought of it. Noel and Carolina . . . you get the idea.

Maria had already proven her dedication to the campaign. A few years ago, the guy who lived in 3508 put in a large raised garden bed around the tree on his parkway. In addition to dooming the tree, this provided a bench where hardworking gangbangers could rest and chat with each other and their girlfriends. And drink and smoke dope and carry on loud, obscenity-filled conversations.

Well, after a particularly rough Saturday night a couple of weeks ago, Michael and Mac and I went to talk to the alderman. Maria, on the other hand, took apart the bench and moved the wood over to the community garden to provide a border for the vegetable beds.

She simply took it apart. Her husband and her sister helped her. And they did ask the current resident of 3508 for permission, which was gratefully given. But, if you’ve never lived in a gang-infested neighborhood, you may not appreciate the courage this act required.

I remember sitting on the front porch one morning back in about 2005, talking with one of my book kids, Erika. She asked me whether I’d heard the shooting the night before. I told her that I had and that I’d called 911. She looked at me earnestly and said, “You can’t call the cops. The gangs will kill you.”

I assured Erika that the gangs were not going to kill me, but she believed what a lot of other people in the neighborhood believe. That’s because gangs are terrorists. They create an aura of violence around themselves, using language and gesture and appearance. Gang signs scrawled on neighborhood buildings contribute to the effect. Sneakers hanging from electrical wires are not just a signal to potential customers, but a way of flaunting the gang’s presence. And then there’s minor vandalism. We find a fair number of hyacinths and lilies beheaded in our front garden every season.

They augment all this with an occasional genuinely violent act, usually against one of their own but sometimes against a young woman who has not been sufficiently protected against them or someone who has no recourse against them, such as an illegal alien. But most of the atmosphere of violence is created by cowardly acts committed undercover. As Michael once said, “These guys are really tough. They can cut the blooms off tulips.” That’s the thing about terrorism. It’s one percent violence and ninety-nine percent scare tactics.

At any rate, when we talked to the alderman, he told us we could get permit parking–and speed bumps (Tony’s idea)–if seventy percent of the neighborhood would sign a petition asking for them. We got the petition forms and left, wondering whether our neighbors would sign. One of the first people we went to was Maria, since it was her idea. She took a page of the petition and, about an hour later, her daughters returned it completed. Twelve signatures from the northeast quadrant of the block.

A few days later, Alberto from across the street at 3519 stopped in to look at a small plumbing problem we had. He signed the petition and then asked us if he could please take it with him to get the people on the south side of the street to sign. Yesterday after our community garden picnic, he brought his page back. Another twelve signatures. And he took another page.

By next Monday, when Alderman Maldonado has his office hours, we expect to present him with the petitions. Wish us luck.

Oh, and here’s a little reminder of why we have to keep doing all this.

children, gangs

Surviving is a Form of Resistance

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Junior’s sunflower had brown petals and a yellow center. Lizette’s red tulips stood in a row like sentries. Laura painted a white rose with full, open petals. Michelle contributed the Mexican flag and a rainbow, even though we had specified flowers only on our garage mural. This is how, when we first moved into the neighborhood, I decided to deal with the Almighty Imperial Gangstas.

We became aware of the drug dealing on the corner of St. Louis and McLean almost as soon as we were moved in. It quickly took the bloom off the first, and so far only, house we have ever owned.We didn’t have a clue what a gang neighborhood was like. We simply assumed that there would be a higher level of crime than we experienced in Andersonville and Edgewater and that some of it might easily be directed towards us, as white interlopers. I think we imagined rocks through our windows and gang signs on the sides of our house.

It did not occur to either Michael or me that we would ever actually engage with the gangbangers, that we would actively battle, alongside our neighbors, for the soul of our community. Long nights of 911 calls and watching drug deals go down in front of our house were still in the future and not something we could conceive at the time. So I decided to go about protecting ourselves in a different way. We would engage with the neighborhood. If we carved out a place for ourselves and actually came to belong here, perhaps we would not be a target for hostility and, possibly, violence. Since many of the adults in the neighborhood did not speak much English, and we spoke absolutely no Spanish, I decided to start with the children. Besides, I’m more comfortable with children.

Michael had little faith in this approach. All right, he had no faith in it. But we’re a partnership and we back each other up.

My first move was to go out onto our front porch with some paper and magic markers and start drawing. It was near Halloween, so I drew a scary face. I had scarcely taped it to the front door when I had three kids looking at me from my stairs. Our door was covered with drawings in a hour or so. From then on, any time I wanted to draw a crowd of kids, I went onto the porch with art supplies.

Then, my friend Mac told me about a man in Boston or Philadelphia who gave away books. He had a basement full of them and just gave them to people. I was pretty sure I couldn’t pull that off, but I decided I could buy books in thrift shops and give them away to the neighborhood kids. A theory began to form in my head.

My theory was that children who live with poverty, crime and violence can make a different future for themselves only if they can imagine a different future. Reading is what allowed me to imagine a future outside Oklahoma City, a future as a writer. So perhaps, if could encourage these children to read, I could help them imagine good futures for themselves. Let me be clear on one point. There were and are a lot of kids in my neighborhood whose families provide them with plenty of books and faith in the future. They come to the “booklady’s house” anyway, because they just like books. Others, though, are clearly in danger, including the children of the gangbangers themselves.

So I bought books at nearby thrift shops for a dime or a quarter and began handing them out–one book per kid per day. No snatching books from each other. No hitting. No swearing. No skates on the porch. I soon had a batch of kids who came by regularly. My friend Mac joined us often. Michael passed out books when I wasn’t around.

And then, at the beginning of the first summer in our new house, the gangs got louder and more threatening, something we would become accustomed to with the first warm days each year. We had moved into the house in October, and the gangs had been much quieter then.We talked about whether to stay, but we knew we couldn’t face another move. (I won’t tell you how many boxes of books and audiotapes and accumulated treasures we still had in the basement, not yet unpacked.) That’s when I had another idea. I told Michael I wanted the kids in the neighborhood to paint a mural on our garage.

He had some qualms.

You see, Michael was about to transform a flat, empty stretch of grass into his first real garden, where he could do anything he wanted and plant anything he wanted. It was a blank canvas with sun. (The garden Michael was allowed to plant at our last rental had what he called”3-flat shade,” or “can’t see my trowel in front of my face shade.” He craved sun, although he would eventually plant six trees in our new yard and create a woodland fantasy.)

In the meantime, Michael wasn’t sure he wanted the backdrop for his dream garden to be paint slapped on a garage by a bunch of strange kids, but I explained that we could always paint it over when the garden began to take shape.

So my idea might be silly, naive, and ultimately futile–“The gangs are getting louder, so let’s paint a mural”–but at least it was an idea. I put the word out, and nine kids showed up to paint.

And this is the mural a few years later, right before we began painting it over. We did frame a number of flowers and paint around them, including Junior’s sunflower.

As for the kids, Jennifer’s parents sent her and her brother back to Mexico a year or so later, to keep them safe. Lizette’s family moved to the suburbs, as did Michelle and Junior’s. Carolina was kidnapped, taken to Mexico and impregnated. I don’t know what happened to the others.

gangs

Life with a Gang

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We were not young. Call it early middle age. Baby boomer free-lance artist types, we had rented apartments in every lakefront neighborhood in Chicago. We’d just lost another great place to increasing property values and increasing rents and decided it was time to buy our first house. We looked carefully, found a place we could afford in an “improving” neighborhood, and moved in.

We chose the wrong block. We had just moved in with the Almighty Imperial Gangstas.

In this blog I’ll be talking about our first eleven years living in “Devilside,” one of the AIG neighborhoods in the area known to more innocent Chicagoans as Logan Square. Our cross streets—McLean and St. Louis—are featured on the Chicagogangs.org website, and drugs have been sold here since the 1960s. If the real estate boom had gone on a few more years, the block might have been worth more as property than as a drug shopping mall. As it is, the wall of money stalled a couple of blocks east of us before it subsided altogether. Because of the glut of foreclosures on the market, our house is worth considerably less than we owe on it. So we and the Gangstas are stuck with each other. They’re not any happier about it than we are, but they don’t have any more choice than we do, either.

I’ll be talking about drugs and shootings and thousands of 911 calls. About one girl murdered in a playground and another kidnapped and impregnated. About a Gangsta dumped on our porch by his pals after he’d done some of the toxic heroin that was going around a few years ago.

I’ll also talk about sharing the evening of September 11, 2001, with a bunch of neighborhood kids who had not yet understood what they would be told in school the next day—that life had changed forever. About thousands of books handed out to hundreds of kids in the faint hope that kids who read will be a hair less likely to become kids who kill, and anyway reading is better than not reading. About foot races on the sidewalk and standing-on-one-foot contests and anything else I could come up with to occupy children on a hot summer night.

I don’t plan to do much analyzing of causes. Our story is far too close and personal for that. Let those who have never watched a young woman hurl a brick through a car window while she was talking on her cell phone try to understand what massive failure of our social and economic system has led to this dark world my partner Michael and I are living in. We’re trying just to survive it.

But when you’re standing in your bathrobe in the dark at the bottom of the stairs looking out at eight or nine guys who have just wakened you at 2:00 AM with shouted obscenities, you can’t help wondering. You pick up the phone and dial the cops because every 911 report gets your block a little more attention when the cars are scheduled. But you also think about why life has to be like this.

Then you take a walk and run into something like this and you laugh your ass off.