What Is Cornerstone Community Outreach?

This ten minute introduction to Cornerstone Community Outreach offers an encouraging response to homelessness in Chicago... CCO is always looking for partners in empowering and equipping those who are on the margins of society. I'm a member of the intentional community (Jesus People USA) responsible for CCO's existence and outreach.

cco - cornerstone community outreach

For more on CCO's Outreaches, including ways you can help, see: http://ccolife.org

Appeal for Help Improving Homeless Kids' Playground at CCO Shelter

Hey, here's something we can actually DO rather than just be bummed about... Cornerstone Community Outreach needs help improving the rooftop playground for the homeless kids CCO serves. Want to help?



For more on CCO's overall outreach, see: http://ccolife.org.

Uptown and the '60s: the Activism of JOIN

Harry Belafonte visits JOIN in Uptown, Chicago - 1968?

There's progressive... and then there's progressive. The rich history of the struggle for justice and housing in Uptown has a fascinating chapter rooted in a "new left" group known as JOIN (Jobs or Income Now). Areachicago.org carries a wonderful piece, "Uptown's Join Community," underscoring not only the group's effect on Uptown's Appalachian white and black communities, but also on the then-still-emerging feminist movement. Current Alderwoman of the 46th Ward, Helen Shiller, has her roots in much of this history. A famous sociologist and commentator on the 1960s left, Todd Gitlin, was with JOIN in Uptown and co-authored with Nanci Hollander the book Uptown: Poor Whites in Chicago.

Related link: Life's Lessons, Part 7 (This portion of a JPUSA history I wrote discusses our "education" politically speaking, and mentions JOIN in passing.)

About that "Woman of the Year" Contest...

As I mentioned a few weeks back, my dearling Carol was nominated as a finalist for Chicago's "Woman of the Year" contest, one of ten finalists out of some twelve hundred entries. Well, the results are in....

Drum roll....

And she did *not* win the award... dangling chads, lawsuits and court battles pending.

[Audience reaction: AAAAWWWWWWWWWWW...]

But seriously, I think she's relieved. I embarrassed her with this whole episode as only a husband can (yes, I started the ball rolling). But she did get, as a finalist, a $100 gift certificate from Macy's, which she will spend on clothes more than likely. So that's some fun!

Thanks for voting for her, anyone who did...

tag: carol trott, breast cancer, Chicago Woman of the Year, cornerstone community outreach, CCO, homeless,

Violence: small town, urban neighborhood, or international event, it is always personal

.

A strange congruence of events -- three murders in my own Chicago neighborhood, one shooting death in my childhood hometown of Fort Benton, Montana (a bit ironic in light of my blog yesterday), and the anniversary of 9/11/01 -- begs contextualizing.

In Fort Benton, one young man is dead of a gunshot wound to the head. Was he murdered, or was it an accident? Two others, one the daughter of Fort Benton's mayor, were implicated in an apparent attempted cover-up of the shooting. I have no idea what happened, but mourn the senseless death, the effects this will have on other family members as well as the shooter and his girlfriend. And I mourn a little town I hold with affection, a place that violence isn't supposed to happen because it is (I wrongly want to tell myself) not a place such things are possible.

In my own Chicago neighborhood, within eyesight of our front door, two men were shot on two seperate nights. One if not both were homeless. These shootings happened just two and three days ago. Meanwhile, again just days ago, a man staying at our Cornerstone Community Outreach (CCO) homeless shelter (his wife and children also are at CCO), was shot down right outside CCO's front door.

With at least two of the men being homeless, we wonder if this is a potential serial killer. Police aren't saying. Meanwhile, some rather nasty upwardly mobile folks speculated on their website that these deaths could be stopped if the homeless and poor were pushed out of our Uptown neighborhood. Others of us met together to help warn homeless women and men about the potential danger, and to attempt new ways of networking our social agencies and faith organizations / churches so that the homeless had greater visibility as individuals whatever group or agency they were being aided by. Last night, I walked with friends from EZRA, a Jewish-based community outreach with offices directly across the street from our 920 Wilson building, walked the area from 11 pm to midnight as a non-violent "neighborhood watch" presence. We wanted people to know we were there. It was nothing all that helpful, most likely, but it was one way of positive protest and unity against the darkness of violence.

Finally, 9/11 every year is a sad day. I remember that date's tears and outrage, my wife and I isolated away from our community for our anniversary, having only one radio, one another and One God to sort out our sorrow, rage, and anxiety. Since then, I've only felt further outrage at our own country's massive idiocy in attempting a response to the attacks, a response which in both its scale and lack of intelligence has linked the Prince of Peace with one nation's horrific acts of violence, acts against a nation which we falsely accused of aiding and abetting our enemies and hiding those infamously non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Christ's name continues to be dragged through the mud by these worshippers of unreasoning violence as diplomacy. Are we Jesus followers done yet believing those who say they speak for us? Will we at last tire of their lies, their cynical manipulation of our beliefs, hopes, and dreams? I don't dare hope so. I'm tired, and out of patience. Yesterday's anniversary reminds me not only of the dark deed done to us by others, but just as depressingly of the invincible ignorance of those who continue their project of blending Christianity (a bastardized version) with nationalism. I don't trust Christian leaders any more. Everything -- except the Love of God through His Son -- is up for reassessment. Old heroes don't wear well these days. If this is where our collective presuppositions lead, we need a whole new set of presuppositions.

Below is the short speech / prayer (not a very good prayer, because I think I was too upset and preaching more than praying) I gave at EZRA's offices on the afternoon of Sept. 10, the day of the third local murder here:

Today, we are gathered here to share in the suffering of the families of those slain, and in the anxiety and anger of our community in the face of these deaths. We mourn Phillipi Larrnarri, a thirty two year old homeless man who was shot while he slept on a bench only feet from where we stand. We mourn twenty-nine year old James Lane, shot outside Cornerstone Community Outreach's homeless center. We mourn one Mr. Belle, twenty five, shot on this block this morning.

Dear Lord, we are sad. We are angry. And though we don't like to admit it, we are afraid. Three of our neighbors have been murdered. Two in this very place. Who were they? Many of us know one or more of them. They were men. They were individuals. They were people of color, and poor. They had children. They had parents. They had friends. All that was taken from them in seconds. Gun. Bullet. Life. gone.

We want our neighbors' killers caught. And in the midst of that wanting, Lord, we confess we'd like someone to blame. We itch to accuse. We would like to blame our political leaders, or blame the police, or blame the poor and homeless. Some, even today, have so blamed. Yet two of these men were homeless, Lord. Forgive us. We lift up our mayor and our alderwoman, as well as our police force. Give them wisdom, God, to not only catch this murderer or murders, but also to find solutions more far-reaching, solutions that bring us together in common cause against these evils.

And Lord, help us to surrender our fear before it poisons us. We remember a day in September 2001, a day in which our entire nation mourned senseless killing, killing done in the name of God. What we learned since that day is that fear and anger can mislead a people, and that it makes of one terrible tragedy many such tragedies. Help us not to live in fear, but rather to acknowledge one another's suffering and so find in that suffering a common humanity.

Help us to empower and embolden the good, the true, and create solidarity in Uptown rooted in our common desire to love and live in safety. Help us to love even our enemies, yet remain vigilant in stopping evil acts and the systemic forces which create room for such acts. Help us to love, dear Jesus, help us to love life so much that we forget to be afraid in the midst of our love for one another.

We know that you are the God of Love. If you are not, then we are without hope. But your son loved us enough to die for us. As you mourned for your Son, so we mourn in Him for those whom he loved.

Amen.

tag: EZRA, Fort Benton, homeless, Jesus People USA, jewish, uptown chicago, violence

Helen Wins. Uptown, Can We Talk?

So... Helen Shiller wins an election that had 11,282 aldermanic votes cast by a margin of 688 votes.* Am I elated? Well, I sure was once the results became clear. But -- still up eighteen hours after this day started, I'm tired, relieved at the election's outcome. And there is another emotion as well. Before I get to it, though, let me tell a sort of story of the day which might hint where I'm going. If you want to skip the story, just jump to the heading "So What?"

Two Yuppies or Two Human Beings?

I worked with two guys -- well, maybe against them for moments here and there -- in my role as a poll watcher. They were poll watching, too, but for Shiller's opponent, James Cappleman. Both were young lawyers -- one a divorce lawyer, the other one a corporate lawyer. The second seemed very unlike the cliche corporate lawyer, wryly telling of a life where he seemed a gopher for his superiors, working ridiculous hours, aware of the potential futility of spending a lifetime working for giant multinationals.... in short a person I found self-reflective and likable. (I was glad, I admit, I wasn't living his life.) He wasn't from our ward, had landed the poll watcher role as part of his assigned work, and seemed to really enjoy the experience.

The first guy is a near neighbor to me, living within easy walking distance. He did use the catch-phrase often used disparagingly by many Cappleman folks and Cappleman himself -- "blighted" -- to describe parts of our immediate neighborhood. But before I was able to go too far down that "I hate yuppie cliches" road, I had to admit he probably wasn't aware that the term was a catch phrase, and an offensive one. He also talked about his law practice. And the more he talked, the more it made him human. How does a guy stand as both observer and participant while a couple legally finishes off what had once been such a sure and new thing? And -- as further rebuke to the line of reasoning in my head -- we talked over what divorce is. Somehow I ended up telling him a fair bit about my own first marriage's sad ending. We all cried... no no, that last bit did not happen. We'd have needed Oprah. Anyway...

That didn't mean there weren't some rough spots between us. The most awkward came up when it became apparent I had around 12 or so names he was unaware of on the voting roles. That wasn't a surprise, as I'd helped register them, then discovered they'd someone been bounced by the election board. Things had been fixed with some eleventh hour scurrying around and making phone calls and... well, the upshot was I gave a copy of some documents from the election board to the Judges at our poll; my neighbor / election opponent now wanted a copy of this list.

Why wouldn't I just give it to him?

Ah. Remember, this election is a repetition for me of past elections going back to Helen's first one in 1987. Every election thereafter, her opponents (and it was always a new face) came after us with all sorts of ideas, ideas that always seemed to involve removing from some or all the right to vote. One year it was for a poll watcher to stand up every time our address was announced and yell, "Challenge!" (I was an election judge myself that year, but didn't know I could have thrown him out summarily without appeal -- pretty cool power, but only if you use it!) Other years we had even judges that got bizarre. One suddenly snapped at the end of the election day, "These numbers do not add up! We're going to throw all these votes out!" (Luckily, I was a judge that year, too -- and told her I'd physically hold her down if she even made one move to do such a thing.) Various other forms of harassment had been used against both our building's residents and the residents of a nearby half-way house called The Grassmere (not sure on that spelling). These folks are often mentally and / or physically challenged, and easily cowed by people yelling at them, questioning them in a hostile tone, and generally showing disrespect.

But these two lawyers... could I trust them not to do this to my new voters? I decided I would not share the names with them, since they could always challenge the votes after the election (which were done on so-called "provisional" ballots anyway) if they really thought I'd done something wrong. I wanted to avoid voters being hassled -- my least favorite thing as any sort of election official. By the end of the evening, I was mostly convinced I could have shared the names... only mostly, though. Sigh...

I even talked a little with them about the awkwardness of it, the friendly banter and even serious discussions we'd had all day about my living in an intentional community (and all that entailed), yet our respective understanding that we were, after all, pitted against one another in working toward different ends. As it turned out, though, I *think* they would not have attempted to stop people from voting unless that person were clearly committing an illegal act. I for myself could say with good conscience that the most important thing to me during an election day's voting is make sure everyone and anyone who has even the most tenuous legal claim on a ballot be given it. I myself had, as an election judge, helped disabled voters asking for assistance vote for a candidate opposite to the one I hoped would win. In fact, it was yet another of our infamous Shiller vs. Whomever elections....

But my divorce lawyer neighbor turned to me, and offered me his tally on how our own Jesus People building had done. "You had nearly a 100% turnout!" he exclaimed. "That is really impressive." And I sensed from him that same sense I had... how to jump the Uptown Chasm, the perception gap that allows so much hostility to simmer? Could we find a new way...?

Enough of the stories, though, as it is now nearly 2 am and in four hours I'll have been up for 24 hours!

So WHAT?

We slowly gathered up our "totals" tapes (print-outs of the day's end results) and said good-bye.

And as I walked up to my room and after an hour or so heard that Helen had won, I found myself thinking about my neighbor. Was he bummed? Was he angry? Did he feel he'd invested his life in Uptown, too, but was stuck with a vision foreign to that which he desired to see?

I know I have the strongest feelings about this neighborhood, especially about making sure that with all the development and condo construction, the poor will not be neglected and left out of the picture. I also know that if I sat down with my lawyer neighbor and tried talking from that starting point, the conversation would quickly mire up to the hubs.

Here's the question. Can we in Uptown, regardless of who we back (and even more important what issues we believe most pressing and urgent for our area), determine to start treating one another more like human beings? That is, to stick to our guns on issues while also going out of the way to speak respectfully to one another and try to find some positive common ground to build one community instead of two with?

We who look across the divide from the poorer side tend to be afraid of how quickly we are left out, forgotten, and even "designed away" by the massive development which has been part of Uptown for the past few years and even longer. Sometimes we let that fear drive us into seeing in every upward young professional "the enemy." That is not only morally wrong, it is also strategically dumb.

Have I done this in the past. Oh, yes. I am trying to reform. What I'm hoping is that perhaps those who backed James Cappelman might go back and cool-like re-read what they or friends of theirs posted on sites such as whatthehelen.com [removed in toto as of Feb. 28!] and buenaparkneighbors message board (go to the "general" posting area for the most, uh, "lively" posts). I've long known that a computer keyboard brings out the worst in a writer. Every emotion we have comes out of the keys amplified many times over, and I wonder if some of that rhetoric may strike even its authors that way in retrospect.

I can't claim -- and never have claimed -- to have one iota of authority over what anyone else does in Uptown. But I would like to make a modest proposal...

Can any of us who are interested in seeing one another as human beings agree to start a dialogue together? The idea won't be to convince each other of something, but rather to simply get to know one another to a degree we currently do not.

If you are interested, please post a comment here. Add your ideas to my admittedly primitive beginning (though, when I wake up sometime next week, I actually do have more to post on this).

One last thing... I hope none of you go to Lincoln Park. I hope you stay here and help birth something that is the best all of us have to offer one another... listening... seeing... acknowledging another's human reality...

Thanks for listening. I'm going to bed now, before I make myself sick from no sleep.

* [March 3 update: Election totals are finally *all* in and Helen's margin of victory has been changed to reflect that fact. Edited Feb 28 to reflect newer vote totals, which are still apparently incomplete due to one precinct having some sort of ballot counting problem. That precinct won't affect the totals much. Also edited to note whatthehelen's apparent removal from the web.]