Windy City Wanderers

What began as a simple photography project aimed at capturing a few homeless people in their respective neighborhoods eventually turned into something much larger (which is why the past couple of posts have been late).

Regardless, when I set out on this mission, I wasn’t prepared for the challenge before me. As a transplant to the city and having lived here for only 10 months, I’m less than familiar with the ins and outs of Chicago neighborhoods, streets and bus routes, especially since I’ve been confined to the near north side due to the locations of work and home. So I found myself wandering about in not-so-comfortable neighborhoods, aware of the many pairs of eyes that followed me and feeling extremely vulnerable. Not to mention, I got lost on more than three occasions. It was quite the adventure.

One stark difference between the north and south sides is that there are no homeless peddlers on the south side, so finding a subject to interview and photograph was an obstacle I wasn’t prepared to overcome. If you wander around long enough, you realize why there are no beggars – there is nothing to beg for in that area. And no one has anything to give.

So instead of giving up on my blog challenge from last week, I decided to capture what I could of some down-trodden people, their homes and their neighborhoods. Over the course of several evenings, I took the Green Line to the south side, got off on a completely random stop and hiked my way north toward downtown with only a camera around my neck and a cell phone with 911 on the speed dial. One evening was dreary and chilly, setting a very appropriate tone for the nature of the project; another evening was sunny, warm and unbearably humid - absolutely miserable. The most chilling parts of losing myself in a questionable area were the sounds that surrounded me... there were none. For being one of the largest cities in the U.S., the traffic was almost non-existent. There were no sirens, no honking taxi drivers and strangely enough for early June, no birds were chirping. The wind never even picked up; it must have been nervous too. My sole comfort was the occasional screech and clack of the El train above me - the only familiarity in this southside ghost town. I didn't venture too far from my security blanket of the train tracks.

I slipped on a White Sox cap (you know, thinking I could blend in with the scenery but to no avail - my blonde hair gave me away), and I took several hundred pictures. I’ve put some of my favorites in the new Windy City Wanderers Flickr account. 

I enjoyed the challenge so much that hopefully in the coming weeks and months, I will be able to capture some of Chicago’s most deplorable living conditions (though I feel like I didn’t really do that in this particular set of photos) in hopes of making readers more aware of others’ needs and less concerned with their own wants.

I recently met a man with social ideas much like mine, with an investigative mission much like mine and a heart on fire for the underprivileged, again, much like mine. There are two differences between us though:

1) He’s much older than I am (159 to be exact, if he were still alive);
2) My work is words scratched in beach sand compared to his.

But I did meet him in his book How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890), and he taught me something I didn’t care to learn so soon in my young life: we as Americans (or perhaps people in general) haven’t changed our fundamental thoughts on the socially deprived in at least 100 years.

No doubt there have been other priorities in the last century like women’s suffrage, civil rights, gay rights, a Red Scare, a Cold War, a Great Depression…

Jacob Riis, an immigrant from Denmark, photojournalist and social reformer, developed a theory in the late 19th century that if he could expose the middle- and upper-class citizens of New York to the hardships of its slums that social reform would ensue. He documented NYC’s streets, sweatshops, alleyways and hidden corners with a new invention known as flash photography that allowed Riis to shed light on never-before-seen areas of run-down tenements. The result was a shocked and responsive audience. The photos of the poor living in filthy, over-crowded conditions eventually led to the New Law Tenement, the closure of poor houses and helped mark the beginning of investigative-style journalism known as “muckraking”.

As I was thumbing through the pages of this remarkable book, scanning photos, sketches and captions, I got a sinking feeling. These pictures look exactly like some very real places in Chicago – right down to the collapsing building walls, grimy alleys and groups of empty eyes staring out from broken windows. As a matter of fact, if I didn’t know any better, I would have guessed they were photos taken from neighborhoods right off the Green Line on the South Side. What a @#$% shame. It’s been over 100 years, and we still allow people to live in these conditions.

I’m no Jacob Riis or James Nachtway or Lewis Wickes Hine, but I can snap a picture. And you can bet on it that I will. All it takes is a little courage, some time, effort, a creative eye and a focused aspiration, and maybe someone will be moved do something.

In the meantime just browse the photos that Riis took, and hopefully next week I’ll have something for you to compare them to. Who knows if you’ll even be able to tell the difference…

History shows the most powerful tool man can possess is an idea.

The Romans knew it. Columbus knew it. Luther knew it. Napoleon, Lincoln, Princess Di, Gandhi, Gutenberg, Mandela, Mother Theresa and Einstein knew it. Kennedy, Malcolm X. and Reagan knew it. The Pope knows it. Obama knows it too.

In my dissection of the accomplishments of these "greats," I realized that there's something even greater and more powerful than an idea alone. After all, don’t we all, at least once in our lives, have some profound, transient thought with the potential to change the course of history?

There must be something greater than an idea alone, or we’d all be creating new governments, inspiring new inventions and starting new religions. Getting to know one woman, Anne Holcomb, helped me capture this elusive force that can turn a simple idea into a beautiful reality.

Growing up Anne lived a turbulent life at home with a father who was mentally ill (diagnosed with psychotic major depression disorder). She admitted to me that when he was in a state of rage, he was uncontrollable. He even “put her through a grandfather clock” once. At the age of 16, Anne was practicing driving a car, and her father, sitting in the passenger seat, became angry, grabbed the wheel and tried to kill them both by crashing into a tree.

When her father’s actions became unmanageable and unpredictable, Anne would run away, often to folk festivals or the like. She would call home and speak with her mother to see what state her father was in, and if things had returned to normal, she would go back home – knowing full well that it was never permanent.

Anne went off to college at DePauw University in Indiana, living in a dorm-size apartment with the bare essentials… until someone burglarized her home, and she was left with nothing. Anne, though she was working, couldn’t make ends meet.

Eventually she became homeless. But she never gave up.

She even bought an abandoned building and made that her home. In graduate school at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies, she formed her thesis around the history, causes and levels of homelessness in Chicago. But her shining moment came four years ago when her idea became reality.

Inspired by her own struggles and passionate about her own success, Anne opened a “drop-in” center for homeless youth in the Lakeview neighborhood which, in the beginning, could only hold 10 people in the small store-front office. Now housed at the Broadway Youth Center, the organization offers case management, medical care, counseling, HIV testing, support groups, mentoring programs and more. Anne even showed me the artwork that program participants have crafted as a fundraiser, including provoking political cartoons such as “Land of the Free, Homes 4 the Rich” and “Who’s Supporting Homefulness?”

Observing this astounding woman interacting with those young people, hugging them, laughing with them and giving them a little glimmer of hope is stirring. She cares for them with a nurturing sort of watchfulness that none of them has ever known, and she does this because she has known what it is to be forgotten. This woman, having had as painful a life experience as any, took her heartache and turned it into an idea. Her idea has since changed the lives of hundreds of young people in this city alone, including mine.

What is greater than an idea?

Love.

Love paired with an idea = change.

In a recent interview with Newsweek, Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham, former professor at Cambridge, McGill and Oxford Universities and author of numerous books including his newest publication Surprised by Hope, argues that a large gap between the upper-middle and lower classes allows for a division in prioritizing social issues among those classes. In response to a question regarding the topics of gay unions and clergy that are expected to arise at the upcoming Lambeth meeting, Wright gives an uncomfortably truthful and resounding answer:

“I wish we could prioritize so that we were actually talking about issues of global justice…there’s something very bizarre about the rich arguing about sex while the poor are clamoring for justice.”

In an age of innovation, globalization, and agathism, have we still not found the gumption to get our hands dirty and build the bridge between the gaps ourselves? Why aren’t the self-actualizers reaching down to the bottom of the pyramid to provide for those unmet “deficiency needs”?

On Sunday afternoon I went to a meeting for H.E.L.L.O. (Homeless Experts Living Life’s Obstacles, an organization sponsored by The Night Ministry and the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless) at the Unitarian Church of Evanston to hear homeless youths give testament to the life cards they’ve been dealt. Three young folks were seated in front of a group of 15 or so eager listeners, each telling of their homeless experiences with wisdom beyond their years, and taking questions from an astonished audience. I talked and hung out with them for a couple of hours afterward, and all the while I couldn’t shake Wright’s staggering statement out of my head “… clamoring for justice…”

D, a 20-something man with a quick-wit and sly smile, is enrolled in culinary classes and hopes to start his own business someday. Though he was reserved when it came to spilling the beans about his past, he didn’t hesitate to dish out advice from lessons learned.

Lauren: What’s the most difficult thing about being homeless?
D: The most frustrating thing besides being on the street is finding a job. And respect. Respect is about how you treat people. If I have a big mansion next door, and all ya’ll are hungry, how can I just sit there and watch? Respect is like just person to person. If ya’ll are hungry, I’m gonna find someone to cook for you.

L: You don’t get respect?
D: Nah, man. You have to see where the other person’s coming from. You gotta step out of yourself.

L: So you’re taking classes and trying to get a job - why is it so hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps?
D: The government sets us up to fail. The rich stay rich, and the poor stay poor. You gotta make your own way. I’m making my own way and waiting on my blessing to come.

On the warm concrete steps outside of the church, “Rabbit,” a 24 year-old artist and poet, with cigarette in hand, opened up about his tumultuous past with incidents of rape, abuse and drug use.

Lauren: What’s your story, Rabbit? How did the street become your home?
Rabbit: When I was 13 years-old, I had a mentor at the Art Institute, and one day I saw the Thanksgiving parade going by. I went behind the alley at the Institute to get a better look, but a man put a gun to my head, pulled my pants down and raped me. I was bleeding, and a woman saw me and asked if I needed to go to the hospital. I just told her I needed to go home.

L: What did you parents say? Did you tell them?
R: My mom saw the blood and thought I got into a fight, but I confided in my step dad which was a mistake. He told me I shouldn’t be gay, and he put me out on the streets selling drugs for him. When my mom found out I was selling, she kicked me out of the house.

L: Then what did you do?
R: I got heavy into acid, coke, reefers. They say weed is the gateway drug, and it is. I got caught though.

L: How did you get clean?
R: I just did. I knew people who were clean, like a support group. I just quit. Now I want to go to college for art.

L: What’s one piece of advice you’d give to your generation?
R: Family is key. Even though you don’t have a real family, people on the streets can be your family.
D: I’m homeless, and it’s ugly. Don’t do drugs, and don’t give up. Just step out of the box.

Spending the afternoon on those steps left me with tear-filled eyes and with more questions than answers. These young people, making conscious efforts to improve their situations, to give back to the community that has hurt them, and without placing blame on anyone, are continuously being dealt a bad hand. They are “clamoring” for justice -- and Rabbit's poetic pen puts it into perspective.

“A Waterless Soul” by Rabbit

I think about you
All the time
With this waterless soul of mine
I think about you leaving me
In this cold night of October
Your love keeps pulling me down like an anchor
Deeper and deeper
In the cold sea I go
Until my soul can’t feel any more
Pain from you and anyone else
Weightless my mind goes in shock
Thinking of you
Is like a boat stuck in the middle of the sea
No where to turn
My arms wanting to hold you again
But farther and farther you go
Away from shore
I’m sinking
Sinking
Sinking
Throw me a lifeline of love
Or I will sink in a waterless soul again

It wasn't hard to find someone who wanted to talk. In fact, I had my pick of lost souls to choose from. It was quite the eye-opener just to see people clamor for some attention from another human being. Most people shy away from interviews with the media unless it involves damage control, but one man, James, didn't seem to care who he was talking to as long as someone was listening.

He sat on the ground, leaned against a wall, eagerly rattling the coins in his cup as passersby ignored him. Maybe they misunderstood, or maybe they weren’t listening close enough. James wasn't begging for change in a cup. He was begging for change in a heart.

Over chai tea and fried rice this nursing home resident told me of his 11-year journey bouncing from mental institutions to hospitals and back again. He willingly offered his life story in exchange for a $6 meal. The dirt under his nails, the black on his teeth and the faint flicker in his blue eyes told me what he had to say would probably be worth listening to.

Lauren: You are only 54 years old - that’s young. How did you end up in a nursing home?
James: It was about 11 years ago I got put in there by my parents 'cause they said I was mentally ill. I don't know why they kept me there because my parents are dead now. A Cook County judge told me I couldn't handle my finances so they gave me a state guardian 'cause I can't handle my own money. How does he know? A throw of the dice?

L: They didn’t diagnose you with anything?
J: They never told me nothin' except I was a paranoid schizophrenic, but I ain’t paranoid. The only thing I'm afraid of is heights. That’s normal, right? [laughs] They told me I hear voices, but I don't hear no damn voices.

L: How do they treat you in the nursing home?
J: They talk down to us, you know, like we ain't people like them. Like we ain't at their level. We only get $30 a month to live on, and you know how much a pack of cigarettes costs now? You get a carton of cigarettes, and it's like you have 200 new friends.

L: Why do you only get $30 a month to live on? How do you make that money last all month?
J: It's like in football. It’s “unnecessary roughness” to take all our money. I had $6,000 in the bank when I got there, and they took $4,000 of it. Everything is up for grabs. They say they run on public aid [from the State of Illinois] so why then are they takin' all our social security checks? You can't get no job 'cause they'll take your check away from you, and then you still only get $30 a month.

L: Is that why you were begging for change on the street?
J: Yep. I'm in the game of life, not the game of B.S.

L: So what about your family?
J: I'm an orphan, and I was adopted. My foster father was gay, and I wanted to kill him when I was a kid. He was a liar - to my mother, to me. He was a hard worker though, but he was a liar.

L: Do you have a wife and kids?
J: My wife died of anorexia. She ran off to California and left me here. She would write but wouldn't put a return address on the envelope so I couldn't find her. I called her dad up one day, and he said she had died, but I don't know. Maybe he was lying. I don't think I have any kids, but you never know there might be one out there somewhere [laughs].

L: So what is it that has brought you through all these trials in your life?
J: You know that Bible scripture that says "What good is it for man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" Well everyone, every Christian, is tempted by that sometime in their lives. You're offered the whole world, and you gotta decide if you're gonna take it or leave it. I left it.

And he left that small Asian eatery with leftovers in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I watched him disappear into a dark Uptown alley, and he never looked back.