Uptown homeless make their own media
By Andre Francisco
Stories about a sex offender living next to a school, a violent gang member and a man working overtime to justify Chicago's ranking as the top U.S. binge drinking city were published about Uptown in the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times in the first two months of 2007.
Among the approximately two-dozen articles published, few were positive and few covered issues relating to the low-income or homeless population
"If good things are happening in the community, you wouldn't know about it if you look in the newspaper," said Mindy Cobb, 53, an Uptown resident who works at the Uptown Baptist Church.
Cobb, like other Uptown residents, has turned to hyper local publications and word-of-mouth communication for her community news. Uptown has an unusually high concentration of social services, many of which have shelters or interim housing facilities. Some of these services produce newsletters and small magazines that they distribute free to their residents.
Many people feel that large media outlets do a poor job of covering Uptown, unless something bad happens. The homeless are already a demographic with little political and social power, and when mainstream media ignore them, they further reduce this power. Many residents read the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, but they said they get their real community news from less widely distributed sources.
The most prominent and recognized publication of this type is the Residents' Journal. The magazine is produced by We the People Media for and by residents of Chicago's public housing.
"All of us in this room labor to keep the people we cover from being invisible, from disappearing from the social radar screen," Publisher Ethan Michaeli said during a speech at the Studs Terkel Awards in 2006.
The Residents' Journal is produced by and for Chicago Housing Authority Residents. It is distributed for free at the front desk of Cornerstone Community Outreach.
The Residents' Journal is distributed to more than 70,000 people in Chicago Housing Authority buildings throughout the city. The CHA has three senior citizen buildings in Uptown, but the journal is also distrusted to CHA affiliated buildings in the neighborhood such as Cornerstone Community Outreach. More than 60 percent of those who live in CHA housing live on under $10.000 per year. The overwhelming majority of the Journal's readers are also single mothers, according to a 2001 study done by the Target Market News Service.
Melody Harris, 47, lives in the Sylvia Center, a shelter that is part of Cornerstone, and gets some of her news from the Tribune and the Sun-Times. For local news and news targeted toward her, she reads the Residents' Journal, which is distributed for free at Cornerstone's front desk.
In the January issue Harris could have found articles about police brutality, security within CHA housing and illegal immigration. The lead editorial attacked the Chicago police for confiscating police-issued press passes from Residents' Journal reporters trying to cover a police raid on a public housing facility.
Some of the hyper local newsletters are published by community organizations such as the Inspiration Corporation. Unlike the Residents' Journal, the content of Inspiration's publication is more practical to fighting homelessness. Typical topics include upcoming events, motivational success stories and testimonials about alternative programs such as yoga or massage therapy.
John Riley, 51, is a guest at the Inspiration Café, and while he reads these hyper-local newsletters, word-of-mouth is an important news source for him. Inspiration members take part in regular group discussion sessions and participants talk about whatever is on their minds. Topics include international issues like Iraq and local issues like gentrification, according to Inspiration CEO John Pfeiffer.
Most shelters and interim housing facilities are empty during the day because children are at school and adults are job hunting. But when they are in the shelters, residents are in common gathering areas. Whether it is the basement of the People's Church or Inspiration's Café, the homeless gather in groups more often than other populations. At night gathering places shift to the dinner line at Cornerstone Community Outreach or the family tables at the Salvation Army.
The dining hall at Cornerstone is a large room with a 30-foot serving window and a couple of rows of tables. The building used to be a factory and the dining hall retains some of the large dark concrete feel of its former occupant, but the chatter of adult guests and the yells of their children help to lift the mood.
Cornerstone and other shelters allow for the exchange of local news and open discussion that is usually restricted to the water cooler or sidelines of a child's soccer game for the middle class. People who live in single-family homes or traditional apartments don't have the spaces to gather like residents who live in shelters.
Some social service organizations encourage discussion partly to help residents stay informed on local politics.
Inspiration recently took its guests to a local aldermanic debate where the guests were able to ask well-informed questions about affordable housing policies and other programs that directly affect them, according to Pfeiffer.
Despite some widely held beliefs, the homeless and the residents of public housing are involved in politics. Residents like 43-year-old Cheri Eid consider themselves well informed and say they get much of their news from other people in the neighborhood.
Residents' Journal publisher Ethan Michaeli believes that the magazine is one outlet that gives the homeless a voice in a media culture that has lost them.
"We have been taught that a rising tide lifts all boats," he said in his speech. "But in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we saw that [the public housing population] does not have a boat...They know how to protest, how to make their voices heard, how to rely on each other. That's the secret of the success of Residents' Journal."