From: petel@bucket.rain.com (Pete Lancashire)
Subject: Re: What an Ugly and Vicious Place Chicago Has Become
Organization: Rick's Home-Grown Un*x
Date: 11 Jan 93 17:54:43 GMT

Patrick Townson (ptownson@eecs.nwu.edu) writes:

>I got quite a few replies in email, and one in particular seemed to
>express my own feelings quite well about the place we call Chicago.
>Since the author did not give me permission to use the letter, I
>have removed all identification from it. Names don't matter, it is the
>sentiment given which counts.

>               ==========================

> Date: Thu, 7 Jan 93 18:14:03 HST
> From: ???
> Subject: Chicago.......


>I just read your post on the "ugly" city and I hope that this is some
>sort of fiction writing you are doing. If not then I guess I cried for
>a good reason.  I am a 13+yr Navy veteran, have traveled the world
>several times, and this is _the_ craziest shit I have ever seen or
>heard! I do not live a sheltered life is what I am saying, pls excuse
>the sh--, you got me emotional. What do you do, I mean are you a
>counselor? did you read this in the paper or what? I used to live in
>Illinois a long time ago, farmtown, and it is hard to swallow that
>this really happens. What do we do ? :

>S ????
>          ==================================

>Nope, sorry, it is not fiction. Do you ever read George Will's columns
>in the paper?  He has discussed Cabrini Green on a few occassions in
>the past two or three months. The name, by the way, is a two part
>name (Mother Francis Cabrini, a patron saint of the Roman Catholic
>Church) was honored by having the first group of 'homes' (and back
>then, in 1943, they *were* homes!) named after her. William Green was
>a prominent labor leader here in the 1930-40 era; the second group of
>structures built in the late 1950 - early 1960 period was named after
>him. 

>The Cabrini Homes, as the first group of low-rises was called, was a
>fine place to live clear through the middle sixties ... really very
>nice. It was the opening of the William Green addition (the high rise
>buildings) which started the downfall of the project. The reasons for
>the downfall are many and varied, and best left to others to discuss. 

>Ironically, the 'projects' replaced an old neighborhood which had been
>there for a half century called 'Little Hell' .. it was a very bad
>run down neighborhood with shanty houses and no running water, etc.
>The social reformers of the 1920-30's, including Jane Addams were very
>anxious to get rid of Little Hell, and put decent housing in its
>place. 

>Now the 1920's are a *bit* before my time :), so I can only go with
>what I am told, but a non-denominational religious organization here
>in the 1910-1970 era called the Chicago Sunday Evening Club used to
>invite Jane Addams at least once a year to come and preach ... (they
>used to have all the prominent speakers of that era there from time to
>time including Clarence Darrow -- an atheist! -- but he loved the
>Sunday Evening Club and they loved him) ... and Ms. Addams I am told
>repeatedly would address the need to 'build decent government housing
>in this city for the less fortunate ..'. Finally the message got
>through and the Chicago Housing Authority, an independent government
>in its own right was established in 1939. Where some speakers at the
>Sunday Evening Club would receive only polite applause at the end of
>their sermon, invariably Jane Addams always received much more
>vigorous and enthusiastic applause that (according to a {Chicago
>Tribune} article in 1925) '... seldom rescinded until the president of
>the club arose from his seat on the stage at Orchestra Hall to
>announce the closing hymn ... '

>Somewhere here I have old pictures and a copy of the program for the
>dedication of the Francis Cabrini Homes in 1943. All the politicians
>were there, including President Franklin Roosevelt. The first director
>of the Chicago Housing Authority, Elizabeth Wood, expressed her
>sympathy that ' ... Jane Addams and her companion of many years, Ellen
>Starr Gates only could dream of what we see has become real today, a
>place where new families can live safely, in decent surroundings as
>they begin on their own in our community ...'

>Within a year or two of the construction of the high rises, the
>handwriting was on the wall ... although most of us did not see it
>that early ... one prominent person did though, and spoke with equal
>fervor against the continuation of the projects just twenty years
>later, from the same pulpit Jane Addams had occupied forty years
>earlier. Martin Luther King was invited regularly to preach at the
>Sunday Evening Club in the 1960-68 era. He urged the government to
>'... admit the failure that segregated public housing has become ...'

>(Bit of history: From its inception, Elizbeth Wood tried to keep the
>projects carefully controlled, population-wise. In those days, the
>city was about 80 percent white and 20 percent black/other ... so the
>original standards at Cabrini required an 80/20 mix. But when Richard
>Daley the First became mayor in 1955 (father of the present mayor) he
>fired Ms. Wood ... put the CHA under the control of some of his crony
>friends instead, and soon began using the CHA as a way to move black
>people out of the sight of white people. Today most CHA projects are
>100 percent black, some are 95 percent black and 5 percent white.)


>  .... But I digress ... no, S, none of what I wrote is fiction. I had
>a very hard time writing that article ... but I only elaborated on a
>few cases involving children. I did not touch upon the many cases
>which involved young men and women who happened to be in the wrong
>place at the wrong time. 

>Did you know that many/most of the kids living in the housing projects
>in Chicago are really very provincial? They were born there, they have
>lived all their lives there.  We have third and fourth generations of
>black families who have always lived at Cabrini Green.  A lot of the
>youngsters there have never been to downtown Chicago; they've never
>heard of the Chicago Symphony or Marshall Field and Company. They go
>to Schiller School until they become disinterested and drop out.
>Schiller has a turn over rate of about 90 percent ... that is, about
>90 percent of the students who start there in kindergarten will not
>graduate from 8th grade there, or anywhere else.  That is not all that
>surprising though, about 70 percent of our high school students do not
>stick around all the way from 9th grade to 12th grade either. 

>Three city blocks and a world away from Cabrini Green is Carl Sandburg
>Village, an elegant condominium apartment complex named after a man
>who used to be a theatre and silent movie critic for the {Chicago
>Daily News} :) .  Well to do white people live there, and the men will
>slip over to Cabrini now and then to buy cocaine and take it back to
>their condo apartment to share with their stock broker and attorney
>friends.  

>Believe it or not, most of the youngsters living at Cabrini *DO NOT*
>want to get involved in the sale of drugs ... god knows it is a
>lucrative career money-wise. They see older black guys lounging around
>in the lobby of one of the high rise buildings; they see a Lincoln or
>a Cadillac pull up to the curb outside with a white man inside and
>they see a young man inside go out to the car, chat with the driver
>for a few minutes, make a mutual exchange through the car window and
>then the driver speeds away. Instead of joining the action, they go
>over to Sandburg Village and stand outside, offering to shine shoes,
>wash car windows or carry groceries for older ladies who tip them
>nicely. They go to the twice a week tutoring program at Fourth
>Presbyterian Church where well-meaning white suburban ladies come into
>town  to teach them how to read and do simple arithmetic. 

>And so S, you ask what can be done?  Nothing ... nothing at all. We
>have come so far now that things will have to be allowed to run their
>course. The USA has lasted longer as a country than any other country
>in history to the best of my knowledge. It has now started into the
>inevitable decline which all countries faced in their final years.
>All over the USA, things are more rotten than ever before. There is
>more violence, filth and decay in the larger cities than at any time
>in history. 

>There are still brave souls around who think that somehow things can
>be turned around, that things will 'get better', and that all we have
>to do is elect one person or another as president and the change will
>begin for the better.  That is nonsense.  It is too late for that now.
>The problems of the cities are starting to spread into small towns all
>over this land. Small places are seeing surges in crime that a decade
>ago would have never been believed. The prisons are full and over-
>flowing. The schools in the cities are failing. The CHA has thousands
>of empty apartments while the city has thousands of homeless people.

>You do nothing, S. For thirty five years or so, I gave a shit ...
>I still do, but my own sanity has to come first. I used to be on every
>community betterment organization in our town. Community councils,
>neighborhood watch committee, one of the people involved in selecting
>speakers for the Sunday Evening Club ... you name it. I did it all. I
>still do my volunteer work at the Chicago Public Library as I have
>done for about a quarter century or so. When people I knew started
>splitting back in the late sixties or early seventies, I scoffed them
>as traitors. Now I am one also, I guess.


>Patrick Townson

> 
Newsgroups: misc.misc