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A Talk with my Mother

I recently wrote an article for the Chicago Reporter about 600 jobs expected to be cut at a Southwest Side industrial bakery -- with a focus on how jobs like those, once reliable gateways to the middle class for African Americans -- have been fading for decades with devastating consequences. It was one of my favorite articles for a few reasons. 1) The black middle class doesn’t get enough attention in the media. 2) The Great Migration and Deindustrialization are two of my biggest historical fascinations. And 3) The story of the family that my article focuses on reminded me a lot of my grandmother and other members of my family who came North in the 1940s.

Like other blacks who moved to Chicago during the Great Migration, Sabrina Pope’s parents sought better jobs and better pay. They found both in the industrial sector after they left Mississippi in the late 1940s -- and so did the relatives who followed them. In the decades since, the family tree branched north and nearly 20 of Pope's relatives, cousins, aunts and siblings have worked at the Nabisco plant.Her mother, Minnie Pope, has an 8th-grade education and worked more than three decades at the same plant before she retired in the early 1990s. “It was a gateway to the middle class,” said Pope, a lifetime North Lawndale resident who earns $26 dollars an hour working six days a week without a college degree. “The same thing it did for my mom, it did for me: I got a good job and I provided.”

My mother and I were chatting about the article a few days ago, and my grandmother came up. Coincidentally, Sabrina Pope’s parents come from around the same part of Mississippi my grandmother Mozelle Smith is from, near Jackson.

Mozelle was born in 1914 into a sharecropping family. She came up here in the 1940s, just like Pope’s parents. She worked at Hygrade Packing until it moved away in the ‘60s. “And yes my family was considered middle class,” said my mother, Rochelle.

She laughed.

“However,” she went on “when my mom’s job moved out of Chicago, we were middle poor class.”

You started your life on a Mississippi plantation in 1914, born into sharecropping. You came to Chicago not much older than I am now, found a middle class job and were active with the union. You raised two beautiful children, including my mother Rochelle and my Uncle Lawrence, who was gunned down by police the year I was born. You saw so many men in our family succumb to drugs and violence and The Hustle. Knowing how precarious black lives are in this country, you spent much of the 13 years we shared teaching me lessons you hoped would help me survive. I only knew you as a stout, ancient matriarch with a low tolerance for bullshit and a strong southern accent. I never gave much thought then to the young coffee brown woman I saw in old pictures, courtly and clad in lovely fur coats and hats. But when I look at those pictures now, I'm struck by your dignity. I can see the strength that you passed on to my mother and my siblings. Your life ended in a North Side hospital. Your cheeks were still warm when I kissed them and hugged you. You had told us with some of your last words to love and build each other up in your absence. In other words, to live by your example. We have a lot to live up to. Every thought of you is a reminder that I'll only live a life as meaningful as yours through hard work and love. Who you were is a big part of who I am. Some people believe they owe nothing to the past, or to the hopes and dreams of their ancestors. Some people, grandma. But I'll never betray us. Happy Birthday, Mozelle.

#the great migration #the greatest generation #Mozelle Smith

'Shop Local' Campaigns about More Than Warm Fuzzies

In Andersonville, the chamber of commerce urging folks to live local and shop local is more than community boosterism.

It's the premise that the more you buy in your neighborhood the more money stays in your community, which, aside from all the warm fuzzies produced, also produces a measurable impact on a neighborhood's economic health.

I wrote an article this week for DNAinfo Chicago that profiled a retiring Andersonville businesswoman who embodies that idea.

My piece told the story of how she ran a business cooperative housing local entrepreneurs that served as a small business incubator and helped revitalize the area, which began as a small Swedish community and suffered from a period of divestment before becoming one of Chicago's trendiest 'hoods.

The article begins with a funny story about how the sweet but sharp old woman dealt with a national chain that expressed interest in occupying her shop once she retires.

A well-known "doughnut franchise" — Jan Baxter won't reveal which one — recently said it wanted to move into her Landmark of Andersonville shop after Baxter retires on Oct. 31. "Have you ever been to the Swedish Bakery?" was her curt rejection, she said, holding back laughter as she recalled the encounter last week.

Baxter, 74 with a short crop of white hair and a frequent smile, is a 49-year resident of Andersonville and fervent believer in its "Shop Local" mantra, and local leaders say she helped revitalize the business community in the 1980s.

"I want more than anything for Andersonville to continue to be locally owned, and not let big boxes or chains in," Baxter said. "All of us have done everything in our power to keep them out — right down to being rude."

A big box store or chain can be an economic boon for a neighborhood, bringing scores of jobs and putting more eyes and feet on the street — but small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, both in Andersonville and in the rest of the country.

That's why advocates for local economies and researchers love Andersonville, with its robust and eclectic mix of small indie businesses.

Andersonville is one of 10 U.S. neighborhoods in the Indie Impact Study Series used by economic consultancy firm Civic Economics as an example of how local small businesses create "a virtuous cycle of local spending."

Small business owners often live in the same community as their establishments and have alliances with other local shopkeepers to buy goods and services, said the study. National chains, on the other hand, are usually more likely to purchase goods and services from outside of the local economy.

Researchers surveyed 13 locally owned, independent Andersonville businesses between November 2011 and October 2012, and asked them to open their books to show the proportion of revenue that flowed back to the community. Restaurants returned 73 percent of revenue while retailers returned about 47 percent of revenue to the local economy. In comparison, an analysis of national retailers and restaurant chains showed them returning about 14 and 30 percent respectively.

While Baxter impresses, her small business and its impact might not exist without help from her local community bank, which was just about the only entity willing to loan her startup cash.

As a staffer at the Andersonville Chamber of Commerce said earlier this year in an interview with me, "more than half of the nation's small business lending goes through community banks."

"They're really the ones who have been keeping the flow of credit going to local businesses. Because basically the big banks really aren't doing it anymore,” she said “By putting your money in a local bank, you are helping make it possible for that bank to lend out money to other local businesses."

#Andersonville Chamber of Commerce #Adeshina Emmanuel #Jan Baxter #Indie Impact #Civic Economics #smallbusiness

I recently sat down and chatted with photographer Ivan Lo about his battle with cancer and his experiences in Afghanistan.

Most news reporting about the war in Afghanistan, which marks its 13th year on Oct. 7, centers on death and instability. What's missing, as Lo sees it, is a focus on the hope and strength that perseveres, stoked by the efforts of Afghans and humanitarians working amid the devastation.

"Afghanistan is so much more than just the war,” Lo said. “The people that I met, they are some of the most resilient people I've ever seen.”

Read the full story here: http://dnain.fo/YtUf0Y

#ivan lo #Adeshina Emmanuel #afghanistan #photography

Is the FDA's 'Gay Blood Ban' A Safety Precaution or Good Ole Fashioned Homophobia?

This might sound like either a silly question or a baffling one depending on who you are and what you know: are you aware that the federal government prohibits men who have sex with men from donating blood?

If you didn't know, don't feel bad. Writing this story Wednesday about efforts to fight the ban was my introduction to the issue.

The FDA website explains the policy, saying men who have had sex with other men at any time since 1977, the start of the country's HIV/AIDS epidemic, "are currently deferred as blood donors."

It's a policy born amid much fear -- and many holes in scientific knowledge and capability when it came to diagnosing the illnesses and screening for them in peoples' blood.

A lot of "kids" my age (20 somethings) weren't born yet or are too young to remember the HIV/AIDS panic of the 1980s, a time when Gay-related Immune Deficiency (GRID) was used to describe what was later known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

It was known then as a disease of homosexual men, and while that demographic still suffers from high rates of HIV/AIDS prevalence, we all know HIV/AIDS doesn't discriminate according to sexual orientation -- and science has educated us about the conditions far beyond what folks knew back then.

The FDA maintains that the ban is based on the increased risk of HIV infection "associated with male-to-male sex," and "is not based on any judgment concerning the donor's sexual orientation."

But critics of the FDA ban who I spoke with for my story diagnosed the policy as "homophobic" and "discriminatory."

They also questioned the logic of the ban, saying blood screenings -- not sexual orientation -- should determine how safe someone's blood is for donation.

One of my interviewees argued, "You can have a gay man who has been in a monogamous relationship for 20 years and he can't give blood, but you can have someone else," a straight person, "who is promiscuous and doesn't know their HIV status and they can donate blood all they want."

I'm not a scientist, and I won't get much into my personal opinion on the matter. But I can at least say it's worth it, regardless of the conclusion, to take another deep, thorough look at the policy given the increasing outcry over it and the evolution of what we know about HIV/AIDS.

FDA spokeswoman Tara Goodin told me various studies are ongoing in lieu of any potential revisions to the policy, and the FDA website maintains that any changes must be "supported by scientific data showing that a change in policy would not present a significant and preventable risk to blood recipients."

A few last things:

Howard Brown Health Center, 4025 N. Sheridan Road, has signed on as the Chicago host of the National Gay Blood Drive, which invites gay and bisexual men to show up at Howard Brown and other donation sites across the country Friday with surrogates willing to donate on their behalf — and sign a petition asking the White House to repeal the ban.

At least 85 members of Congress wrote a letter to the FDA last summer asking the agency to revise the blood donation policy.

#Gay Blood Ban #national gay blood drive

It's Been a Long Time. I Shouldn't Have Left you.

This is me starting "a blog or something" as various people have suggested someone who writes as much as I and talks so damn much should do.

Take a look around. Obviously Private_Ade isn't new. It's merely a sparse, incoherent and neglected corner of the internet that I've never done right by. I'll see now if I can do any better.

The city’s offer of a $14 million TIF subsidy wasn’t what JDL Development President James Letchinger wanted. It wasn’t even close. He had requested $32M in tax dollars to build expensive luxury housing in Uptown under a $220M plan that has since its inception divided the community because of disagreements over affordable housing, historic preservation and TIF funding. But now it’s back to the drawing board for JDL.

I’ve been covering this project since November 2012. For the latest, and background on the controversial proposal (the affordable housing and preservation stuff is particularly interesting) check out the article and prior DNAinfo Chicago articles on the topic.

#uptownchicago #afforablehousing #JDL Development

"... I know you saw the guy who shot and killed Hadiya Pendleton at Vivian Gordon Harsh Park Tuesday.

It’s probably tearing you up inside. I feel for you.

You’re probably afraid to tell anyone you were there because in Chicago “snitches wind up in ditches.”

But don’t be afraid.

You are not a snitch.

I can’t say it enough.

And I can’t wait for Derrick Rose, Jennifer Hudson or Kanye West to join forces with the cops to help get the word out in our violent neighborhoods that the definition of a snitch is a criminal who rats out his associates. Not an innocent witness who helps police.

And on Tuesday, the only potential snitches out there are the cowards who participated in the senseless slaying of 15-year old Hadiya and the wounding of two boys in her group.

But that’s not you.

You are not a snitch.

You saw what you saw.

You believe in right and wrong.

And the rest of us need your help.

These gun-toting gangbangers are killing Chicago kids and terrorizing our neighborhoods.

And they’re not afraid to keep shooting because odds are they won’t get caught. Our silence helps them get away with it. Last year, 94 percent of gunmen who shot and wounded someone didn't face charges.

That's a scary statistic.

Because when a shooter stays on the street the next person to get shot at a park could be you, me or someone we love.

Still, we don’t get it."

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