[00:00:00] Change agents. Google Chicago's Englewood and the first thing you'll find is a headline calling it one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods. But residents tell a different story about reclaiming spaces and flipping that narrative on its head. Here's journalist Natalie Wade with Englewood reframing the narrative.
Asiaha Butler: We all know that greater Englewood has somehow become the Like poster child for everything that's wrong with Chicago. But at the same time, because of that perception, uh, residents have been able to shift the narrative and use it as an opportunity to show not only the resiliency, but just the creativity and kind of genius of the residents that live there.
[00:01:00] What they've had to do to kind of overcome the obvious neglect and disinvestment.
Natalie Wade: Can you guess what Chicago cross street I'm standing on? My name is Natalie Wade and I'm standing on the corner of 66th and Halstead, right smack in the middle of Englewood.
Other than cars and buses going by, the street is quiet. Folks are chatting in the distance, and people are on their way to work. About eight miles south of downtown, past the glittering skyscrapers that line the lakefront, the White Sox stadium, and just west of the I 90 expressway, is Englewood, a neighborhood that has been cast as one of the most notoriously dangerous in the U.
S. Even if you're not from Chicago, you may have heard something like this on the news or in popular films and TV.
Scene Tape: say they are frustrated with how police acted during a foot chase chaos in the 5700 block of South May in Englewood the seeds for the shameful destruction we saw [00:02:00] last night breaking news from overnight, uh, for the third weekend in a row now, children have become the victims of gun violence One incident in Englewood, Englewood, in the Englewood neighborhood.
Cordell: I was born St. Bernard's grew up a lot in Englewood Chatham. My dad's family was from Chatham. My mom and her side that she liked to be on was from like Englewood wood lawn. I grew up right off the train line. Um, the family has a Aaron gangs and stuff. And so like in the nineties, we left Chicago, 97. We moved to Ohio and, uh, I end up, you know, I got taken away, lived my life, went in foster care, went from city to rural America.
Natalie Wade: I met with Cordell to see if there was more to Englewood than its bad reputation. Cordell says that he wasn't sure about returning to Englewood, or Chicago for that matter.
Cordell: With creating positive art and positive [00:03:00] culture, it counters those things that was created under like, Chief Keef and Lil Durks, like the trap phase that got us coined to Chirac, which, you know, a movie like Spike Lee's Chirac, which had filming there, you know, it's not just the news.
It's multiple waves of the media being like, these are crazy people. And it's just like, You know, it worked on me. It got me scared to move here.
Natalie Wade: I'm from Rogers Park, the far north side of Chicago. And although Englewood is in the same city, it's always felt a world away.
Cordell: Eventually, I ended up going back to finding my real family after moving out from my foster family.
And once I reunited to them, I kind of reunited with the hood and the black community. Upon my return, I felt nothing but, like, I felt home immediately. I immediately went back to the hood. And, like, I remember Even now, I was arguing with friends from Rogers Park about Englewood, you know? It's just like, it hurts a lot, you know?
Especially like when another black or brown person who happens to [00:04:00] live on the north side wants to view you that way, and it's like, do you know how we view you?
Natalie Wade: I didn't realize how stigmatized Englewood was, even within the black community on the north side.
Cordell: What do you think? impacted the fact that you may have not went there before?
Do you think it was more so the media or more so like what you hear?
Natalie Wade: I guess I'm not a hundred percent sure if I've ever been, um, because like I've been on the South side and I'm not always like, Oh, like this is one specific community or another. I've definitely heard like neighbors, like someone that I'm talking to maybe on the street and it's like, Oh, I'm going to visit my friend.
And they're like, Oh, where? I'm like, Oh, be care. You know? And I was kind of always like, Hmm. Okay. Like always skeptical of people's reactions like that. Was my reaction an anomaly? Although I had heard stories about crime and violence in neighborhoods on the opposite side of the map, and flashes of police cars on TV screens when something bad went down, I never understood the fear that some people had for a community that many of them had never even stepped foot in.[00:05:00]
Jamie Nesbitt Golden: Well, there's always sort of this reputation Englewood had. Um, and even now, when I, you know, tell people, you know, that, that's my beat, it's like, oh, it's so scary. Well, and it's bullshit. Um, wait, am I allowed to be appropriate? I'm so sorry. Okay. Because I, I will drop, I will drop a bad word here and there.
Natalie Wade: That was Jamie Nesbitt Golden. We chatted over Zoom.
Jamie Nesbitt Golden: Like, Englewood has that sort of Rocky Balboa, you know, like, gritty, fuck everything. We, we, we got us. And that's, that's admirable.
Natalie Wade: She's a community journalist who grew up on the south side of Chicago.
Jamie Nesbitt Golden: I cover Englewood, Chatham, and Auburn Gresham for Block Club Chicago.
Natalie Wade: Block Club Chicago is a nonprofit newsroom that specializes in micro reporting. Based on your reporting and all the [00:06:00] people you've spoken to, how does media representation, not even just negative representation, but constant negative representation, affect
Jamie Nesbitt Golden: It makes people not want to go there.
It makes people not want to invest or even try to see the humanity of the folks that they're being affected in these areas. Public perception definitely doesn't reflect what's really happening in Englewood. Having covered it, or having had the privilege of covering it, I can say that what we see in the news, what we hear in documentaries, is not, doesn't match up to what I see.
When I'm able to, you know, pre pandemic go out every day and see community in action.
Natalie Wade: Even Jamie, a born Southsider, had to understand her own biases.
Jamie Nesbitt Golden: And I'm not going to lie, I did come in with my idea, my own misconceptions about what Englewood was, because again, I'm hearing it from everyone else And I had to sort of disabuse myself of the idea of, you know, the stereotypes that are attached to this neighborhood.
It's not that. It's not all doom and [00:07:00] gloom. There are many amazing things happening.
Cordell: For the overpass part, we're trying to get the community feedback if they want, uh, strength, peace, and growth. Or vibrant, proud, and strong. No problem.
Voice 1: This something good. We need this out here. What's your name?
Cordell: I'm Cordell.
Cordell, yeah. And we're with the Resident Association of Greater Englewood. Alright, so we just want you to pick which phrase you like better. Strength, peace and growth or vibrant, proud and strong.
Voice 2: Uh, I like the top one. Peace, yeah, strength, peace and growth.
Voice 3: Well, I like vibrant because I wear vibrant colors.
It's good on us dark people. I'm very proud of us and I'm very strong. You have to be strong in Chicago.
Voice 1: Because strength. It's going to bring about peace and growth. It's all together. It's like, it's like a heart.
Natalie Wade: On October 31st, a new mural project brought the words strength, peace, and growth to life.
Cujo: There's community out here painting right now. So when they walk by, they'll definitely know that, you know, they contributed to this wall. You know, they painted on this [00:08:00] wall, so they'll have ownership of it.
Natalie Wade: That's Cujo of the Englewood Arts Collective.
Cujo: Like you already have some sense of like ownership of the neighborhood because you live here.
But like, if you actually put paint and sweat down on this wall, like it's a piece of you now. So when you walk by it, like, yeah, you feel like, you know, I did this. You can, you can say, I worked on this wall. I painted that wall.
Voice 4: Well, we're going to be beautifying the, um, the community and we are actually participating in the in the painting, which I think it's fantastic because it gives us a sense of ownership.
Natalie Wade: It's not just a painting project. The mural represents a sense of belonging and engagement in the neighborhood. How are you going to feel when you drive or walk by this mural knowing that you played a part?
Voice 4: Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna gloat about it. I'm definitely gonna tell everybody, Hey, I helped paint that.[00:09:00]
Natalie Wade: We're at 58th and Halstead, and this mural is just one of the many community projects launched by Englewood organizations.
Asiaha Butler: There are tons of Vidocs, there are tons of places in the community that could be beautified. Just in general, to me, art is healing. And so when you see things beautiful, that's why I keep the pictures around me.
I look at them every day. That's why we did our vacant lot with mainly art. It lifts you up.
Natalie Wade: That's Asiaha Butler, co founder of RAGE. She's also known as Mrs. Englewood.
Asiaha Butler: You can't come in a community and just think you're just going to revitalize. And people hate their communities. So what do you do to make people love their community, fall in love with their community, and then you get to rebuilding and rebranding and revitalization.
And that's where we're at right now.
Natalie Wade: She works at the RAGE office on 66th and Halsted.
Cordell: And Mrs. Englewood, Asiaha Butler, she's an Englewood native. who worked in real estate, and as she was moving her way up [00:10:00] in the career field, she was doing the service for the community.
Natalie Wade: Outside the office, it's quiet, and there's a large garden with tables and a stage.
Inside, phones are ringing, and on every wall is covered with paintings that radiate black empowerment and love for Chicago's South Side.
Asiaha Butler: So most folks have, you know, coined RAGE as this asset based community development group. You know, I had never, you know, heard those terms before. But one thing that I knew that I did as a leader is like, It's assets here. Why aren't we using them? And why are we reclaiming these spaces? And some of those are free and we could really get a lot of work done in these spaces.
Natalie Wade: She has strong roots in the community.
Asiaha Butler: So my parents are from here. My father grew up here. My mom grew up here. My husband grew up here.
Natalie Wade: But at one point, Asiaha and her husband planned to leave Englewood and Chicago altogether.
Asiaha Butler: Me and my husband both felt [00:11:00] that we were just going to relocate. We started preparing to move.
And although I had issues on the block, um, one morning I was just looking out at the vacant lot across the street and I had saw these, um, kids playing in it. They were playing in dirt and tires. And I just kind of told my husband, you know, If, if we leave, you know, we'll be like everyone else who kind of leaves the hood and not think about ways to uplift it or think about ways to help and, you know, change it or transform it for the better.
Now I want it, right? And now I want to transform it. So for this little girl who's over here and for it to be something else more than this.
Tanika Johnson: I am Tonika Johnson. I am And a co founder of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood, as well as co founder of the Englewood Arts Collective, and creator of [00:12:00] Folded Map Project.
Natalie Wade: Tanika met Asiaha through her community work, and the two have been friends ever since. Tanika started the Arts Collective so that artists could use their art to improve the neighborhood.
Her Folded Map project compares south to north side neighborhoods, showing the disparities in resources and living conditions. RAGE and the Englewood Arts Collective are working together on the mural event, calling it the Invest Southwest Mural Project, providing residents with a sense of ownership in something beautiful.
Voice 5: Do you believe that Creative, uh, space making impacts community residents life perceptions of Englewood?
Tanika Johnson: Um, yes, I definitely do. One, it calls attention to the fact that we have too many geographic locations that need creative placemaking, so that's, uh, an issue. And then two, it really empowers, Residents like to see actual residents doing something creative like that and [00:13:00] then encouraging others to think differently about not only Englewood, but the exact location that we might be beautifying or repurposing.
And Englewood's beautifying efforts have been noticed outside the community. Lydia Ross is the director for public art of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She attended the mural unveiling.
Lydia Ross: Some of the words that were tossed around with this mural were, you know, proud and strong and community.
And so I think to have a day like this where people actually get to put a paintbrush in their hands, you know, get their hands dirty and actually be able to go up and down the block and say like, that black square right there, like I did that. Um, that this isn't just for a group of people, it's with a group of people.
So I think that, that sense of pride, both in having artists who are from the neighborhood and who really celebrate folks from the neighborhood, but also the opportunity to be a part of making it happen yourself. [00:14:00] So I think that the impact is that, you know, there's beautiful art where there were white walls before, um, but also something that people had a hand in, in making happen.
Janelle Nelson: It's just like a creative day of just joy. And so we're literally painting the mural. We're painting the wall. The public is picking up paintbrushes and they're finishing the mural. But we've got drummers, and it sounds like we've got musicians. And I didn't even know we had, um A band, which is so dope.
There's literally a band playing right now. I didn't even know they were going to be here.
Natalie Wade: That's Janelle Nelson, an artist and one of the Englewood Arts Collective's original members.
Janelle Nelson: We want the memory of this event to exist in an ethereal sense. Meaning, we want folks to, when they think about Englewood, don't just think about the news headlines that you might see.
Think about things like this. This is representative of this community. This is not some outsider coming in, gifting someone something. This, this is Englewood. These are [00:15:00] the people that live here. So the lasting impact is us reframing the narrative, um, on a consciousness level and hopefully on a global consciousness.
Felix Will: We have brilliant people here. We have families that work here. We have people that care about the community. We have people, we have artists, we have doctors, we have everything here. We're not just the worst of us.
Natalie Wade: Although not from there originally, Felix Will and his family moved to Englewood and he has grown to love the neighborhood.
Felix Will: Don't just think, because that's the only thing we can afford. We want to be here. We could have moved any time. I want to be here and we don't want to leave.
Natalie Wade: The phrase I kept hearing from Janelle, Asia, and Tanika is the power of creative placemaking.
Tanika Johnson: Creative placemaking is basically re imagining and repurposing an
actual location, environment, something artistically, or just [00:16:00] through creative use of a space. So, um, a more typical description of what creative placemaking could be is. It's how people transform vacant lots and how they make them gardens or put a stage on there or whatever. Just the creative use of a space other than what it was intended.
Cordell: The goal is to show that when community members take a hold of their community, like they can be the solution. RAGE was really just a coalition of community members who wanted to make an impact.
Tanika Johnson: Children, it also has, you know, a deeper psychological impact. You know, when you grow up in a neighborhood and you only see abandoned buildings and eyesores, you know, it could make you feel not proud to be from that neighborhood.
And it could also make you think that it's normal and that you as an individual are not entitled to a better looking neighborhood. [00:17:00]
Voice 6: One day me and my buddies were It was riding around, you know, we saw RAGE doing a SoFresh Saturday. It was just at the park, it was like, you know, we smelled hot dogs and stuff, and saw they were giving out food.
So I walked over, and then I realized, hey, this is the same group that's over, that be by the red line, with the drummer boys be, who were handing out free stuff.
Asiaha Butler: We would just post up on a vacant lot, we would, barbecue, play music, give out information and just talk to people walking past. What was important to us and it still is what we live by is us connecting first.
Um, we didn't want to, you know, immediately jump into action, but we wanted to connect. So we started, you know, Going to these other meetings, go on to bars here and there, and really starting to, um, have building relationships with each other.
Natalie Wade: Making that connection meant finding Englewood's 60, 000 residents where they lived and played with a plan.
Asiaha Butler: Oh, so there's been over a hundred people, upward of a hundred [00:18:00] people at a village meeting, six times a year. For, for the last 10 years. So then we started saying that's how many people have came regardless of their repeats or not. Then we started looking at our tour, seven parks in Englewood, different geographic locations, three to 400 people each time in the park.
And even if they wasn't at the park. We hit that blocks all week. So now you know who we are. So then we start multiplying that. And then we started looking at the service calls. What happens when SoFresh Saturday is happening? Oh, actually the service calls has decreased. So that means even though we've never called this a violence prevention thing, this is actually creating a peaceful space and that people are not being fools over here while we're in this space.
Natalie Wade: And RAGE has collected data that backs up their success.
Asiaha Butler: We do look at that data. We are capturing that data, um, similar to what we did with the COVID, you know, with COVID, our COVID responses. Like we had people, um, [00:19:00] each week we service 100 to 150 families with food, um, for, you 12 to 18 week. Now with the alt market, we could say every day, probably have upward of traffic between 20 and 25 people who at least walk through there, you know, daily.
Natalie Wade: Englewood has over 5, 000 vacant lots. One of them sits at the corner of 66th and Halstead. Instead of seeing an abandoned building and parking lot, Asiaha and Tanika saw an opportunity, especially since the site had a violent history.
Asiaha Butler: When I thought about where it was at and the symbolism of that store. A, it was a church's chicken where over 16 people got killed or were shot.
And then B, it was a crappy In N Out deli that sold the worst of the worst food. And now they're closed due to their licenses. It was like, it's a perfect place to rebrand and, and beautify and also use it as a organizing tool for [00:20:00] community building. And so that's what that, so it just was the best fit.
Cordell: It'd been shut down multiple times throughout the years for health hazard. The. Seventh district command center was placed there because there were shootings one night. Like it's, it's right in a hotspot, a crime hotspot.
Asiaha Butler: So with the alt market, it just made sense when we took over that, um, local, you know, store that why not have the market up there and have it as an opportunity to stock it with food and essential items.
We are in COVID people still need food and essential items and use it just as another organization. Um, and I think just like we used to do on the vacant lots 10 years ago, it's the same example of that. Um, and so we've gotten nothing but great response.
Cujo: Do you want any toothpaste or hand sanitizer?
Thank you. Yeah, uh, have you been up here before? Yeah. You heard of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood? We're the people who manage this. Anytime you're [00:21:00] over here, feel free to grab anything you see up there. Yeah, I've been, I've been saying it for about two weeks. I want to thank y'all for helping out the community.
Because it's a hard time down here. I just really do help out a lot of people. Myself and everybody else. I want to say thank y'all, appreciate y'all. And may God bless you. Keep up the good work.
Tanika Johnson: I can't dismiss the fact that, um, There is a population in greater Englewood that has been impacted by gun violence, that participates in crimes that involve gun violence.
And so I acknowledge that that population exists. I also acknowledge the barriers and issues that have been placed in their lives and our lives where one might lead. down that path. But there is also, uh, a variety of other lived experiences that exist in greater Englewood. [00:22:00] In order to contribute into changing the narrative, I had to claim ownership of my own narrative.
Like, no, I actually have not had any experience with gun violence. I'm sure I've Heard gunshots. Sure. I know people who have, but no, I haven't.
Asiaha Butler: I had a mindset shift. My initial mind was, this community is horrible. People are shooting outside, they shooting dice. Nobody cares about themselves. I need to leave.
Right? And then a lot of folks feel that way, but when I shifted my mind to be like, wait a minute, you're here. You can add value here. Let's see what people are doing. How do you support them? Then I'll meet them. Phenomenal people, right? And I'm meeting, I'm hearing these phenomenal narratives and I'm like, wait, these stories are not told.
Natalie Wade: I'm Natalie Wade with [00:23:00] Englewood, Reframing the Narrative.
Narrator: Thank you for joining Change Agents, produced by the Juneteenth Productions, with funding support from the Chicago Community Trust and the Field Foundation. Please subscribe to our series on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts. Do you have a story to share? Join us in the ongoing conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and our website changeagentsthepodcast.
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