Blackstone Bicycle Works is an offshoot of the creative incubator known at the Experimental Station (located at 61st and Blackstone). Recent recipients of Seattle’s Best Coffee’s Brew-lanthropy Award, the Bicycle Works has been teaching local youth Bike Mechanic skills as well as healthy life lessons since 1994. They offer reasonable bike repairs and sell refurbished bikes in the space starting at $90.
The program is just one cog amidst all the good things going on at the Experimental Station…
A Communiversity Course beginning next week…
This course examines the history of gangs in Chicago through the lens of racism and social movements. Rather than explain Chicago’s history of gangs as a one-sided story of criminality, the course looks at how gangs have played political roles in Chicago and have changed in response to local conditions. Check out an intro video for this course HERE.
Educator: John Hagedorn is Professor of Criminology, Law, & Justice at UIC. Author of People and Folks: Gangs, Crime and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City, his most recent book is A World of Gangs; Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture. William Julius Wilson called Of People and Things “the most insightful book ever written on inner-city gangs” and “required reading for anyone seeking an understanding of gang activity in our large urban centers.”
Dates: March 23 – May 8
Place: online (with two in-person sessions)
Fee: 8 sessions, FREE for all ages
This course is open to all….
for more info (and registration information) click here
About the Communiversity:
According to Mia Henry, Communiversity events, facilitated by the Chicago Freedom School, seek to engage intergenerational audiences in the study of past movements and discussions on what we can learn from them…
A student at the Westinghouse Industrial Vocation School on Chicago’s West Side. May 1973
“…A student at the Westinghouse Industrial Vocation School on Chicago’s West Side*. She is one of the nearly 1.2 million black people who make up over a third of the population of Chicago**. It is one of the many black faces in this project that portray life in all its seasons. The photos are portraits that reflect pride, love, beauty, hope, struggle, joy, hate, frustration, discontent, worship, and faith. She is a member of her race who is proud of her heritage.” caption by John H. White
*Westinghouse was demolished in 2009, and a new campus was completed at 3223 West Franklin Boulevard. No longer a Vocational School; it is now a selective enrollment, college preparatory high school. The former location of Westinghouse was a former candy factory, listed in the American Institute of Architects’ Guide to Chicago.
**as of the 2000 U.S. Census, the City of Chicago’s Black Population is 1.1 million, a very similar statistic to back in 1973. However, this data excludes suburban areas (whose African-American populations, in many cases, have swelled). Also of note: the 1970 population of Chicago was 3,620, 962. As of 2000, it was 2,896,016 people
NOTE: I included his original captions here; but I also included my own updates of said captions.
from the National Archives website:
From June through October 1973 and briefly during the spring of 1974, John H. White, a 28-year-old photographer with the Chicago Daily News, worked for the federal government photographing Chicago, especially the city’s African American community. As White reflected recently, he saw his assignment as “an opportunity to capture a slice of life, to capture history.”
Today, John White is a staff photographer with the Chicago Sun-Times. He has won hundreds of awards, and his work has been exhibited and published widely. In 1982 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography.
I am a big fan of John H. White’s photography. He has that magic ability to tell a whole story with one frame. click here for his website
taken from the National Archives and Records Administration Website
Life And Death of the West Side: a Communiversity Course
Dates: March 12 – April 30 (8 weeks)
A Community Theatre Project
In this course, participants will create an original theatrical stage production based on the Chicago West side Riots of April 6-8, 1968 (that were in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr). Participants concentrate on script writing, research, production, and set design. The project will end with a live community performance.
Facilitators: Sabrina Miller and Clarice Mills have over 20 years of collective experience in dramatic theatre and community activism.
Time: Thursdays, 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Place: Franklin Park Fieldhouse, 4320 W. 15th St.
Fee: 8 sessions, $25 for 21 and over, free for under 21
photos, Chicago Riots by Jo Freeman.
About the Communiversity:
According to Mia Henry, Communiversity events, facilitated by the Chicago Freedom School, seek to engage intergenerational audiences in the study of past movements and discussions on what we can learn from them…
 | Janice on Gouster or Ivy Leaguer? |
 | Nyssa Perkins on La Cade: The little hair care… |
 | Drew on Hi-Fi White: Foodstamps, Bulld… |
 | Nicholas B on No Coast, Schmo Coast… |
darkjive.com 
School Closings as School Improvement
Vocalo.org user DJFreeHuey uploaded a first person audio piece:
“Concerned parents and teachers of Chicago Public Schools students are speaking out and protesting Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 Initiative and the city’s approach to closing and ‘turning around’ numerous neighborhood schools.”
click here for “School Closings as School Improvement….”
Leave a comment | tags: community, Education, Renaissance 2010, vocalo.org | posted in Commentary