hilos

douglas park- on marshall blvd. in between roosevelt and 16th street, there is a small space with ponds and weeping willows. there are also flower beds. the park had been getting fixed up and a lot of families make use of it in the summer time to play sports and just hang out.

frida blue skies studio- 3008 S. avers. this is the home of a family who are all around artists. there are art programs held there for kids and it is just a beautiful placed filled with art work.

Yolot-Atecocoli – 2005 S. Blue Island is also a place with art classes. they have a gallery space in which they hold events, anythings from live music to visual art. they also lend out the space when someone wants to put something together. for example the electronic music festival was held there. it’s quite the awesome place. 

cafe mestizo, on 18th near paulina. this is a coffee shop. their hot choccolate is awesome. what’s really cool is that they have a gallery space and different art work circulates through there, as well as different projects, like the one about pilsen and gentrification. they have held many events there and i would recomend stopping by. 

the neo futurists- these are a group of people who write/perform/produce theatre. they have a really awesome set of plays (30 plays in 60 minutes) and going to see them is always a fun experience. the plays are inspiring and fun to watch. i would highly recomend going to see them, but it is first come first serve so get there early, and bring cash. their website is http://www.neofuturists.org/

well, this one got removed but we will have a new space soon… Arte y Realidad is an art collective in Little Village. we provide free art classes as a way bring the community together, sharing our skills and knowledge with the community. you can look us up on myspace. our e-mail is arteyrealidad@hotmail.com

well, that is all i have. i hope you check these places out, because they are fun and play an important role in shaping their communites.

i really enjoyed looking at eden’s blog because of the interesting things she wrote about. like the guy with the traveling art bus and the red bull exhibit. i wish i’d found out about this stuff earlier to acctually go to these things. i’ll be on the look out for them in the future.

her blog is also interesting to look at, with pictures and different colors for the type. presentation is important because in this case it welcomes the person viewing the blog. 

yay for usability!!!and design!! and eden!!!  

the reports from governing.com (from the magazine ‘governing’) rating the performance of states in a variety of areas  was interesting to read.

for one thing it was amusing to find out that when the state offered a retierment package/incentive more people took it than was expected. giving way for new people and, according to the report, a chance to restructure public management.

someting that came up for both louisiana and illinois was the lack of information on maintenance of things like roads and buildings. i remember hearing about a bridge collapsing and people getting more worried about the physical conditions of roads and bridges. i guess that rings true for the report since the states have not been doing maintenace very well.

it seems that louisiana has a better way to tract and asses information than illinois. that’s good, but i wonder about what both states are doing to help out people who’s jobs and opportunities are seriosly curtailed through a variety of factors.

i bring that up because of the healthcare struggle for single payer that has increased in recent months. also becasue the article mentions that louisiana has more people living in poverty than most other states but the treasury is growing fast due to oil prices.

something of unequal distribution comes to mind . . .

after reading to articles, one specifically on austrialia and the other that took a more general look at the trends of the effects of the olympics on a city i still don’t know wether it is a good or bad idea to bring the olympics to chicago.

for one thing, in australia the olympics allowed for a more publisized struggle of the rights of the indigenous people who live there. i mean i’m sure if the olympics were to come to chicago a variety of people would take advange of the publicity to bring light to their efforts for social justice.

one article mentioned how there were a lot of jobs created, like in the service industry, but these jobs did not stay. they were there for a short period of time. i guess the challenge would be finding out how to keep these jobs, or create more stable ones.  

http://www.real.uiuc.edu/news/OlympicImpact_2006.pdf 

the article on australia mentioned that most people were volunteers. that would have to be true in chicago as well other wise the cost would go up a lot. acording to the report i read the cost would have increased by A$140 million if the volunteers had been payed.  

something we mentioned in class was that the public transportation would have to be improved, since now it is getting more and more expensive and many routes are being taken off. it seems to me that to bring the olympic would requiere the city to at least try to fix that.

 revenue might come in from tourists but we already have high tourism, so would the impact last?

i’m more concerned about how the neighborhood would be affected, would prices in housing inrease? would police get more strict to try to make it seem like the city has no problems (and end up profiling more than it already does)? i could not find these answers when i looked but i am concerned about that.

i don’t think many people would contest the idea that education benefits our communities. the question to consider is whether the current institutions we have set up hurt or help our communities.

yea there can be great teachers, i’ve had some of these and they are part of what make schools worthwhile. yea they provide a space to learn and explore and meet new people.

theoretically, that is.

i was talking to a friend of mine and he was telling me about a time when a protest was organized in farragut high school to protest the high fees students were being charged. i looked it up. here is a link to an article about it:

http://catalyst-chicago.org/news/index.php?item=1778&cat=30 

the accountabilty and criteria for the fees was hazy at best. what struck me was how administrations react when students fight back. i guess i should not be that surprised but it is not so different from how administrations react in movies. students are threatened with suspensions, even expulsions. they look for the organizers. looking for someone to blame to discourage other students from standing up too. anyone who helps them, like teachers, are also made an example.

i don’t know how it turned out in farragut, but i am looking at something more recent. that was in 2005. earlier this month a group of students at morton west protested against the war. they were told to move to a different spot than the lunchroom, which they did (locking arms at some point so they would not be arrested).

now  some are facing 10 day expulsions. others 5 day expulsions. those with a lesser punishment are the ones with a higher gpa. the students and parents are protesting these arbitrary and discriminatory desicions. here is that article:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/content/education/chi-mortonprotest_07_bothnov07,0,1157092.story 

i guess the conclution i draw is that schools are not places for kids to learn but places to keep them in place. to indoctrinate them almost. keep them out of ‘trouble.’

i mean there are exceptions with teachers and other administrators but their jobs are made hard by the stric ways of learning (curriculums) and other restrictions placed on them. they too are organizing though.

the students are taught the theoretical aspects of their rights but should they ever try to implement them they are met with resistance from the authorities.

we really have to work on our education systems. and on alternatives to these as well. shoot.

like it was pointed out in class the chronology presented on the uic library website makes no acknowledgment of the fight the residents of what is now the uic campus put up to stop their displacement. i mean even the classes that take place at uic make reference to that history, but the chronology mentions no conflicts. i thought that was an interesting reflection of the image the university wants to put forth.

 something new i learned was that uic was gated. i had heard about the crazy walkways that did not turn out to be pleasant. but a gate? that really shows how much the school was not for the communities that surrounded it. 

and even though there have been improvements made to make the services offerend by uic more accesible to the people that live around it, the rising prices of the apartments and houses are ensuring that the people moving in have more resources than  those that are there. i guess who is being served is the question.

i mean the campus is gettign nicer what with the new recreational facility, and the new housing developed on the south part of campus . . . but at the same time tuition is going up and jobs are not paying more from what i’ve seen.so again, who is receiving the resources?

i think if the school wants to keep improving its facilities, that is great. like how the bathrooms in lecture center b now have a place to dispose of tampons and sanitary napkins (which were missing before. the whole was there in the stall but no container in place). that was an improvement. new gym? nice. 

i just think we should make sure all the workers are being payed and the students can acctually afford the tuition (and other things like birth control) before we praise the university for the physical changes it has been making.   

one thing that i think would also help bring communities closer is not only a space but means to be able to use it. that means having the time to go there. i don’t actually know how to impact this other than continuing the fight for better wages, better working conditions, better benefits, and less working time for all people, so they have time to spend with their families and develop instead of working two shifts all the time.

i mean there are just some things a garden can’t do. this is where the importance of educating and organizing ourselves come in. this may seem rather vague but i don’t think that many people really believe the current political system to be on their side, or fighting for their rights. so how do we deal with this disconnect?

we can’t not participate and when we do we know the choice between who we elect is not all that different, or if it seems to be, even well meaning people will be undonne by the restrictions placed on how and what they can actually push forward.

i don’t mean to discuss electoral politics but it just seems ineffective sometimes, plus there is all the other people who can’t vote including some immigrants and young people. so how de we then participate in electoral politics? do we?

i don’t know. but what i wanted to get at was the importance of seeing what we can do and what other people have done, like creating alternative education routes, and here in chicago a group of activists formed the alternative consulate to the mexican consulate because of the bureacracy they saw the consulate get tangled in.

i guess i have not quite figured out how to fit all this in, but i feel thoughts rearranging themselves in my head as i learn more and more about our societies and communities. sorry about the vagueness but that is what it looks like in my mind.     

so i’ve been thinking a lot about how to bring communities closer together, and while my participation in arte y realidad has really heloped me grow i still think there are ways i can improve (i actually think we all agree on that).

so, the main point i want to bring up is that i think that having a community garden might be a really good way to enhance our lives and togetherness.

here is what i envison. a space were people can come together outside, were local people work together to farm and take care of a space; a place were we can hold workshops and other stuff. so yeah a lot like a park but we can farm on this one. there are things like this already but i think we need more of them. we need to multiply them in comunal spaces!!!

i picture all the stuff we do already, the bracelet making, runing, playing with clay, having an oven, making a fire plus the fire throwing stuff with the golos and the chains, plus the new stuff like the hula hoops and stuff.

idealy we could just do this in a park but i don’t think they would let us do a small fire, but i still think it would be worth it.

having a space for this would be nice, specially one in which we could learn to work together and learn about the species we inhabit this earth with. a community garden would be really awesome.

so that is my new project, but there needs to be something more i can’t quite figure out yet….   

so just like there are syereotypes about all people there are stereotypes about people who have at some point been gang members. i was looking through this website about gangs, and there are some really interesting writings on it. one is the overestimation of gangs and the things they do. i mean even the definition of gang is not clear cut, and neither is who is a member or who participates in different actions.

one section of the website talks about how police overestimate gangs as a way to legitimize their actions. the media helps out by overdramatizing the shootings that occur. i’m not saying that these don’t happen but it seems like there are a lot of them  even though this may not statistically hold up. but back to who gets targeted. i think it is manily young people of color who get targeted as being a gang as oppose to just a group of friends haging out.

it seems like a total divide and conquer strategy in the part of the state becasue of drug laws that are tied to class and race issues (as i mentioned earlier in the comment on cocaine). there was this study done where two gangs were researched and the one who was white was treated differently from the one who was made up of people of color. the white gang’s crimes were perceived as things kids do and that they will change, etc. while the other kids were viewed as bad and police came down harder on them (i’ll look into this later but i don’t have the material on me).

there is just so much racism and classism involved. it’s like “all young men of color are gang members and all gang members are bad” which is not only racist but obscures the realities of people and why some (of any race and calss) join gangs and others dont, and it obscures the humanity of gang members who are people like the rest of us.

don’t get me wrong. i don’t like gangs in general becasue of the territorialism i feel they propagate, and the making money off of people selling and buying drugs. but these activities are not exclusive to them (since explotation seems to be an accepted part of capitalism) and are aided by racism, classism, heterosexism and all that stuff in society that cuts off the oportunities people think they have and are able to take and keep.  

putting people in jail is not the answer, since that just makes their opportunites less viable and messes with them (from the intimidation and corruption and exploitation that takes place in the jail atmosphere). i mean i don’t have an answer but criminalizing youth is not the approach i wanna see in our cities.

and that is what seems to be happening.