Pilsen - News, Photos and More on the Windy Citizen

Chicago photographers lament the end of the Polaroid

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:25:14 -0500

Along with the 8-track, cassette tapes, vinyl records and so many other things, the Polaroid instant photo as we know it may soon become a thing of the past. The company announced in February that it will stop producing its once-popular instant cameras and accompanying film by the end of 2008.

Finding the beat of Chicago's Latino quarter

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:05:00 -0500

IN a fifth-floor art gallery in Pilsen, Chicago’s fashionable Latino neighborhood, vibrant guitar chords were pouring out an open window on a recent Friday night. Four Latina artists were showing their paintings, and the shoebox of a gallery was jammed with a mixed, talkative crowd. Some swayed in time to the music, swigging beer and sipping wine. The din seemed to be drawing art patrons and good-time Chicagoans from all over the huge building at 1932 South Halsted Street, the central site of an every-second-Friday art walk.

A coalition against discrimination

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:03:45 -0500

Hate crimes are on the rise, up almost 8 percent in one year, according to U.S. Department of Justice figures for 2006, the most recent data available.

The victims are black, Hispanic, Asian, gay, lesbian, transgendered, and members of various religions, among others. While they suffer together, they also suffer separately, because members of these disparate groups often have prejudices about each other.

Chicago bank bandits on the rise

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:07:40 -0500

Move aside, Bonnie and Clyde. Modern-day desperados could put Chicago on pace for another record year of bank robberies.

Instead of career robbers, people from many walks of life are gravitating to robbery, ranging from drug addicts to employed middle-class individuals, according to Gregory Scott, professor of sociology at DePaul University.

"We're coming to the end of the really well-plotted, well-organized bank robbery that results from long-term strategic planning. Now we're talking about lower-level bank robberies," he said.

In addition, Scott said, the new breed of robbers is more diverse than the old guard.

According to the FBI, 9,010 people were involved in 7,272 bank robberies nationwide in 2006. Black males executed 46 percent of robberies nationwide, white males 36 percent, and women only 6 percent. Of these robbers, the FBI identified 3,584 people; 46 percent were narcotics users and 22 percent were previously convicted for bank robbery, bank burglary, or bank larceny.

Today's robbers are spontaneous and opportunistic, according to a 2007 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, which identified three factors contributing to rising robbery rates: more bank outlets and extended hours creating greater opportunities, robbers' perceptions of banks as a lucrative target and because robberies are usually fast, low risk crimes.

After decades of fewer than 100 robberies per year, robberies in the Chicago metropolitan area shot up in the mid-1990s. In 2006, the number of robberies peaked at 284, more than in the entire state of Florida.

The Chicago office of the FBI collects bank robbery data for the five-county area surrounding Chicago - Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and Will counties. As of March 12, there were 52 bank robberies in the area, on par with numbers for the same 10-week period in 2007. The total robbery tally for 2007 came in at 226, down 26 percent from 2006.

By extrapolating the first several weeks of robbery activity for the remainder of 2008, "we could be on pace for another record year," said Ross Rice, a spokesman in the FBI's Chicago office.

Illinois is not the only state grappling with higher robbery rates. Nationwide, a new era of bank robbery is on the rise - and banks are paying the price.

In 2006, robbers hit 6,985 federally insured financial institutions, stealing a total of $72.7 million, of which law enforcement recovered $11.2 million. Although 90 percent of robberies are a "success," according to the Department of Justice study, nearly 60 percent of robbers are eventually caught.

And robbers face big risks for a typically small reward. For an average take of $2,000 to $3,000 per robbery in the Chicago area, robbers face federal punishment of up to 20 years in prison.

To the non-robber, these risks may be too much, but Scott said some robbers may not even be aware of the how little they'll nab or how long they'll sit in prison if convicted.

"When people reach a point of fiscal desperation, they're often not weighing the costs and benefits," Scott said.

In addition, security measures apparently do little to deter robbers. Of the 7,272 robberies or attempted robberies nationwide in 2006, 98 percent of victim institutions had an alarm system and/or surveillance cameras.

One man accused of robbing seven Indiana banks told a newspaper earlier this month that his only deterrent to robbing banks was security guards. However, fewer than 10 percent of banks robbed in 2006 had a guard on duty.

After two robberies at a North LaSalle Street branch of Builders Bank, president Chas Hall said the bank decided to hire a guard for that location. He said the bank took this additional security measure in part to deter would-be robbers, but mostly to provide peace of mind to the bank's employees.

"We don't want that to happen to our employees again," Hall said.

But if a recession is on the way, could employees like Hall's be subjected to the desperate measures of desperate robbers again? Not necessarily.

There is no direct correlation between crime and unemployment according to Scott, though economic crime rates may move with changes in the economy.

"When things change fast - unemployment suddenly spikes or it suddenly goes down - people are thrown into what sociologists call anomie," Scott said.

Anomie is marked by instability and a lack of societal norms and Scott said individuals are more likely to take greater risks during such periods.

In addition, robbery was on the rise even before the r-word was on everyone's lips. Rather, rising robbery rates may just be a by-product of changes in the banking industry.

Price said the FBI does not interpret robbery data, but said the most commonly touted hypothesis for rising robbery rates is the proliferation of branch banking.

"The theory is that this creates a greater opportunity for people who are so inclined," he said.

This theory sticks with Scott. As financial institutions have become more decentralized, he said, banks have become more accessible to consumers, but at the expense of becoming more accessible to robbers.

"This is a technological innovation that has legitimate pro-social goals, but . the underbelly of greater accessibility is greater vulnerability," Scott said. "Banks are far more susceptible to being robbed and they're easier to rob."

But even as banks continue to expand, they are fighting back, according to Debbie Jemison, spokeswoman for the Illinois Bankers Association.

"Banks are doing everything they can to protect their employees and customers," Jemison said.

She said several security measures thwart would-be robbers, including security guards, bank fraud task force programs, and participation in the association's thumbprint signature program and FRAUD-NET.

The thumbprint signature program requires non-account holders to provide an inkless impression of their thumbprints for certain transactions. Meanwhile, FRAUD-NET is an online collaboration for banks to share information about robberies with other financial institutions and law enforcement agencies.

Within minutes of a robbery, for example, a bank can electronically disperse a physical description and information about the robber's modus operandi to other banks in the network and law enforcement officials.

In addition, many Illinois banks are participating in a program to combat rising robbery rates, the "No Hats, No Hoods, No Sunglasses" program. The bankers association launched the program in 2006--security guards ask people entering the bank to remove hats, hoods or sunglasses-- as an inexpensive way for banks to deter so-called "note job" robberies, in which a person hands a note to a teller demanding money. In 2006, more than half of robbers demanded money using a note.

Beyond the take, there are other costs to robberies, according to Hall, the Builders Bank president.

"The biggest cost [of a robbery] is that is such a traumatic experience for our employees," Hall said.

Hall said the emotional cost far outweighs any financial cost and said banks should be very appreciative of their tellers.

Jemison of the Illinois Bankers Association agrees. "There is definitely a psychological cost," both for employees and customers, she said. If a bank is a robbed, it will often provide a program for affected employees and customers. And the effects of a robbery are felt even after the robber has fled.

Working with the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force, victim banks provide valuable information to law enforcement to catch serial robbers - people who have committed at least three robberies.

And bankers are always looking for ways to keep robbers at bay, according to Jemison.

"Banks constantly review their procedures to better thwart robberies from occurring," she said.

But Scott, of DePaul, is not optimistic that these efforts are working yet. While he expects robberies to reach a saturation point, he said some security measures - such as surveillance cameras - do not effectively deter criminals.

ER asthma visits down as patients learn to manage disease

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 05:50:32 -0500

There was a time when Kiyoshi Martinez sat on the sidelines. During recess he'd watch as his classmates conquered the jungle gyms, slid into first base and made goals on the soccer field.

It was a time when the school nurse kept his inhaler on hand, ready to rescue him in case of an emergency.

He went to the doctor's office every day after school to get an allergy shot. All of this just to help him control his asthma. "Why is this happening to me?" he would ask himself.

Issue fatigue: Attacking pollution in Pilsen

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:46:32 -0600

The West Side Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen has lead in the soil, a coal plant grandfathered past the Clean Air Act, an EPA-fined smelting plant, a sanitary canal and is bound on three sides by smog-producing interstates and freight rail.Dorian Breuer of the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization said it's hard to get people to care about Chicago pollution.

"Toxic pollution in those communities is just one of a whole litany of complaints that are not likely to be addressed," Breuer said.

In low-income, minority Chicago neighborhoods such as Pilsen, Englewood and Little Village, neighborhood-based environmental groups are finding it hard to bring their issues to the fore. Concerns about gangs, violence, poverty, joblessness, a lack of services and gentrification are competing for weary residents' attention.

"I would almost describe it as 'issue fatigue' in these communities -- that there are so many issues in these areas and so much to work on," Breuer said.

That fatigue extends not only to the residents, but to the neighborhood groups themselves.

Jean Carter-Hill is the executive director of Imagine Englewood If, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the quality of life in the low-income, black neighborhood. The group conducts safety, community outreach and lead-poisoning prevention programs.

The high lead levels in Englewood soil come from old buildings that used to be on vacant lots. After demolition, the rubble was buried in the lots.

"Some of [the lots] are still vacant and the children still play in them and they get lead poisoning," Carter-Hill said.

Currently, Imagine Englewood If has three staffers - Carter-Hill, who works for free, and two part-timers hired on the expectation of grant money. The grant money didn't come through and Carter-Hill might be forced to let one or both of the part-timers go.

This means choosing priorities, Carter-Hill said. The majority of residents' concerns, she said, involve violence and gangs.

"You're limited with resources, so which one are you going to work on today? Which one are you going to do?" Carter-Hill said.

Breuer said residents of Pilsen, which the U.S. Census Bureau once considered the largest Mexican-American community after East Los Angeles, worry that gentrification could price them out of their long-time homes. However, it's not as much a concern in nearby Little Village, said Lorena Lopez of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.

"We're not selling out to Starbucks. We're selling out to factories, so what's really worse?" Lopez said. "I can tell you there's about 150 industries and most of them pollute."

Little Village has one of Chicago's two coal plants. The other is in Pilsen. Both were built before the Clean Air Act of 1970/1977, so are held to a much lower environmental standard than a new plant would be.

A 2002 Harvard School of Public Health study linked the Fisk plant in Pilsen and the Crawford plant in Little Village to more than 40 deaths, 550 emergency room visits and 2,800 asthma attacks a year.

Adding insult to injury, Lopez said, is that the Crawford plant in Little Village sells its electricity out-of-state.

"For us to have the burden for somebody else's electricity, it's just unbelievable," Lopez said.

The plant is on her group's "toxic tours" of the neighborhood. Other stops include a plant that burns leftover chemicals from steel shipping drums; a plastic recycling plant moved to the area from the ritzy, North Shore Lincoln Park neighborhood; a recycling plant that takes garbage from eight other neighborhoods so smells and attracts rats, and a 24-acre former asphalt plant that contaminated 170 nearby homes with cancer-causing chemicals.

The former asphalt plant is part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund project, which helps clean uncontrolled hazardous waste sites.

"It's much more than global warming; it's really about people's direct health," Lopez said. "It's ridiculous how we can have brownfields and Superfund sites and factories just in one place. It's all in one place."

Thousands of Chicago-area immigrants register to vote for the first time

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:00:48 -0600

Even the bus is a prime spot for Maria Gonzalez to reel in a few more Chicagoans to get their names on the voting rolls.

“I go to stores, to churches, anywhere,” said Gonzalez, a member of the Chicago group Mujeres Latinas en Accion, which concentrated on registering immigrants in the Pilsen neighborhood. “Every time I see people, I show them a flyer,” she added through a translator.

Israel Garza considers his choices during Chicago's early voting period. Garza, 37, said he is voting early to be sure his vote is counted. "If I can make the time to vote, then anybody can," he said.
Peter Holderness/Medill

Gonzalez is one of dozens of volunteers responsible for registering over 5,600 Chicago-area immigrants since August to vote for the first time this election season.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant Refugee Rights, which organized the registration push, announced the final tally in a short news conference led by Cook County Clerk David Orr on Tuesday. After the announcement, a group of early voters headed to the machines to make their political picks before the Feb. 5 primary.

Lena Tleib votes early in Chicago: "Every vote counts, and it's important that Muslims in America get out and vote."
Peter Holderness/MEDILL

While the majority of new immigrant voters are Latinos on the South Side and the northwest suburbs, over 600 new voters are Arab American, a population that has felt especially marginalized in recent years.

“I feel like our community needs a voice,” said Lena Tleib, an administrator at the Universal School in Bridgeview, an Islamic education center. “Many have experienced racial profiling and racism in the workplace. But the top priority is foreign policy. What’s happening over there is very personal to people.”

This is the first year the nonpartisan group has made the registration push in time for the primaries. The coalition mobilized volunteers to go door to door and to hang around naturalization ceremonies to pursue newly eligible voters, according to Juan Jose Gonzalez, a spokesman for the New American Democracy Project.

Evergreen Park resident Maria Diaz said people in the community responded with mixed feelings to the idea of voting, partly because many are mistrustful of the system.

But Diaz sees voting as her responsibility, acting as a representative for those who have not completed the naturalization process.

“I vote for those who cannot vote,” she said through a translator.

Khawla Ahmad works with the Mosque Foundation to increase political participation in Chicago's Muslim communities. "I've voted for the past 30 years," Ahmad said. "I know I can make a difference by exercising my right to vote."
Peter Holderness/MEDILL

Chicago’s Chinatown celebrates 4075: Year of the Pig

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:13:19 -0600

[video]http://www.youtube.com/v/hx0cLHjSvdg[/video]

Dragons, Drums, Bagpipes, Politicians! Welcome, Year of the Pig.

Chicago’s ‘Ellis Island’ sees fewer immigrant homeowners

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:34:06 -0600

Adriana Sandoval wants to buy a home in Pilsen.

She grew up in the neighborhood after her family moved there from Mexico when she was 5. In 1992, they joined a large number of families in moving to the Southwest Side near Midway airport.

Now 34, she has started looking to move back to Pilsen. “I was really priced out of the market,” she said.

Immigrants are leaving Pilsen for several reasons. Some who own homes leave when assessed values push up property taxes, others when developers offer large sums to buy their property. And some who rent leave when they cannot afford to buy. As it loses foreign-born residents, the neighborhood risks losing the dominant immigrant character it has had for more than a century.

Between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of foreign-born residents in Pilsen went down from 56 to 49 percent. Several community organizations confirmed that the trend has continued in recent years.

Alejandra Ibañez, executive director of the Pilsen Alliance, a group resisting cultural changes in the neighborhood, said she has seen a large exodus of Mexican families from the area. “We’re also losing the history of the neighborhood that has been Bohemian, Czech, German and Italian,” she said. “Immigrants who came through Pilsen from the 1890s [on] came because they had nowhere else to go.”

Ibañez said owning a home in Pilsen is now out of reach for most immigrant families.
Kristen Komara, who educates homebuyers as director of financial services for The Resurrection Project, said, “Incomes haven’t kept up with how prices are rising and so families can’t afford homes here.”

In 1990, the median home value in Pilsen was $45,000 and the median household income was about $20,000. By 2000, the median home value increased to $105,000 while the median household income had only risen to about $30,000.
Housing prices for Pilsen continued to rise after 2000, and by 2006 the average single family home was selling for more than $300,000.

Renters as well as homeowners have been affected by these changes. Even families who own their homes face higher property taxes from increasing assessed values. About 80 percent of residential properties in Pilsen increased in assessed value from 2001 to 2005, data from the City of Chicago collected by the DePaul University geography department shows.

When paying increasing taxes, offers from developers to buy properties become more appealing, Komara said. “The biggest impetus for our families to move is investors knocking on their door.”
As they move from Pilsen, displaced families are finding homes elsewhere in Chicago neighborhoods farther south and west, as well as the suburbs. Fifty-three percent of foreign-born Latinos own homes in the Metropolitan Chicago area, more than the 50 percent of U.S.-born Latinos and 49 percent of non-Latino blacks who do, according to 2003 data compiled by the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies.

However, more Latino homeowners – including the foreign-born – live in the counties surrounding the city or in the suburbs than in the city, the data shows.

The Rev. Tim Howe, principal of St. Procopius School in Pilsen, said about 70 percent of their students come from immigrant families. Only 25 percent live near the school. Many used to live in Pilsen, but moved out toward areas such as near Midway Airport in recent years. “You have a lot of people who report that as good news – because they can buy a house,” he said.

Sandoval wants to find a place in Pilsen where she could someday start a family, remembering the strong community ties she had while growing up there. “It felt like a large extended family,” she said.

A graphic designer for a real estate company, she had access to realtor’s databases and makes more than Pilsen’s median income, but she still found the process of homebuying difficult, especially for single-family homes.

“A lot of them were probably in tear-down condition and were still out of my price range or required too much work that I couldn’t afford to do,” she said. “Then I started to look at condos, but I prefer something that’s more vintage, not as rehabbed or new construction.”

Also, the condominiums were too small and cost too much, she said. The space limitations of condominiums – even for those that are set aside at affordable prices – are a problem for many immigrant families.

“Sometimes you have three generations living in the same house,” Komara said. “They are not going to fit in a condo and not one for $300,000.

But the prices aren’t a problem for everyone. Some of the new migrants to Pilsen find the offers quite affordable.

Marco Logsdon, 42, was living in Kentucky but wanted to own a gallery in a city. He looked in Washington, D.C., but prices were out of his range. Then, he attended the annual Chicago Arts District Open House in East Pilsen in October 2005 and set his sights on moving there.

Starting in the 1960s, the Podmajersky family, who first came to Pilsen from Slovakia in 1914, became developers in the area and set up the Chicago Arts District. They renovated dozens of old industrial buildings along South Halsted Street and created an artists community.

Logsdon said, “The way they had the spaces set up was for an artist to live and work in the space, and that was really what I was looking for.” He pays $1400 a month for a combined living space, studio and storefront.

However, being in East Pilsen feels like a get away from the hustle of the city, while still being nearby. “I get in the car or take the train and in 10 minutes I’m in the city, in the heart of it all,” he said.

Howe of St. Procopius said he hopes the new homes in Pilsen will combine with enough affordable housing to create a community where new and old residents can live together.

“If Chicago could generate mixed income communities, that would be great,” he said. “I don’t know of any like that, that last for longer than a weekend.”

Shannon Long, co-owner of Mode Realty in East Pilsen, said the neighborhood needs new development because of some of the poor construction in the area. “You can get rid of a lot of the housing stock down here just because it’s in such bad condition.”

The new condominiums have created a neighborhood feel that is much more like the trendy spots of Wicker Park and Bucktown, Long said. “There are people coming in from the suburbs who look out from the train and say, ‘It’s really changed,’” he said.

The changes in Pilsen are not just because of new development, but because the manufacturing jobs immigrants have traditionally held are no longer centralized there. They have spread out in the Chicago area, Long said. “Because of modern transportation you don’t really need a port of entry anymore.”

Sandoval said Pilsen’s culture will continue to be shaped by migrants from other countries or other parts of the U.S. “It’s always going to be our gateway to new arrivals in Chicago, whether it’s artists or undocumented immigrants. It’s our Ellis Island.”

Pilsen will also have a special place for her, and she will continue to look for a home to buy there.

“Being an immigrant you feel like you never really have a home anywhere,” Sandoval said. “I feel very Mexican and very American at the same time in Pilsen. That is where I find people that have gone through the same experiences that I have and have the same outlook.”

Fire devastates four-story apartment in Pilsen

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 11:18:34 -0600

Fire destroyed the top two floors of a building worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in Pilsen Thursday, but no one was injured, a Fire Department spokesman said.

Leaping flames and a tower of black smoke could be seen from blocks away when the building at 1637 W. 21st St. caught fire just after noon.

“I was just walking home and I saw the fire,” said Oscar Nava, 17, who lives next door.

He called his friend Zeus Galindo, who was in the second-floor apartment with his brother.

“I had smelled the smoke, but I thought it was coming from the heater, so I turned off the heater,” said Galindo, 17. After Nava called, Galindo and his brother left. They were the only two people in the building.

Larry Langford, spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department, said the fire likely started on the third floor and spread to the attic.

“It’s not huge as far as fires go, but it is significant,” Langford said. He said it was a still alarm fire, the first level of classification, but was close to the second level.

By mid-afternoon, the Office of Fire Investigation had not determined the cause of the fire.

Galindo said the electricity had gone off unexpectedly on the third floor Wednesday night, but residents had decided to ignore it and tell the landlord Thursday.

“I’m guessing electrical fire,” he said, standing several doors down from the building where firefighters continued to contain the fire at 12:49 p.m., with chunks of the façade falling and continuing to burn on the sidewalk.

By the time the visible flames were put out at 1:09 p.m., the third floor and attic, and parts of the roof, had been destroyed.

Two residents of the destroyed apartment arrived soon afterward. Viewing the blackened shell from the street, they cried and held each other.

Friends had called Gizehl Sandoval, 20, and her sister to alert them to the fire. They lived in the apartment with their mother and two brothers for four years, she said.

“We don’t have anything now,” Sandoval said as she stood with her sister, Galindo, Nava and other friends. “It’s all we had. There’s nothing left.”

The ground floor of the building had been a bar, but has been closed for six or seven years, though its Busch beer sign remained, residents said. No one lived in the fourth floor attic.

Galindo said the building was apparently safe, and they had no problems with their landlord.

Owner Sabino Medrano, who is in his 80s, was asleep in his home several blocks away, his grandson Ricardo A. Sanchez said.

Medrano owns several buildings in Pilsen, Sanchez said. He estimated that the 1637 W. 21st St. property is worth more than $400,000.

Langford said fire investigators would determine what in the building could be salvaged, as well as looking for fire safety measures such as smoke detectors.

“Of the 34 fatalities we’ve had in the city this year, all of them were in homes without working smoke detectors,” Langford said. Local fire stations offer free smoke detectors and hand out free batteries twice a year, he said.

There was also a fire at 3400 S. Kedzie Avenue at an abandoned factory earlier in the day.

“It has been a busy morning,” Langford said.