Stewart School Blues

Most days I walk about 3 blocks down Wilson Avenue to and from work. This brief trek through Uptown reveals so much celebration and tragedy! It screams of community and gentrification, compassion and violence, activism and discrimination, trauma and elation! You have to close your eyes tight to remain neutral on such a street! 

The street tells countless stories: I walk out of my building to see a few apartments occupied by those once homeless. I've watched an abandoned Burger King turn into an expensive glass high-rise. I’ve marched with other protesters over our authorities trying to prevent people from feeding and giving shelter to the poor. I’ve seen developments rapidly grow before my eyes. I’ve seen the friendly embrace of friends and the beauty of forgiveness. I’ve been watching the tragic gutting and destruction of the Wilson Men’s Hotel, causing a new and traumatic path of homelessness and loneliness. I’ve had people dangle their keys in front of me, proudly revealing their successful journey from homelessness to housed. 

Wilson Avenue is never dull, or silent! It is beautiful, ugly, needy, loud, busy, hateful, and compassionate! It is the poor begging for spare change, while the rich arm themselves with cell phones, ready to call 911 on them. It is discrimination, it is privilege! It is those standing on the corner “positively loitering”, ensuring the blatant marginalization and incarceration of those they’ve deemed unworthy. Every journey I take is unique, and my steps are always interrupted by the tragedies and celebrations that cry out to me! 

To me, one building has recently cried out more than others! Halfway through my walk is seen the Stewart School Lofts! These luxury apartments used to be an elementary school, that had a playground and a little park adjoined to it. I know of one little boy who cried inconsolably over the playground's destruction. There was a strong sense of community on this little stretch. Cultures would come together, kids would play, friends would unite on the benches, and families would picnic in the grass. Then, in a highly controversial move, the city's mayor (Emmanuel) and his aldermen (which included Uptown's alderman, James Cappleman) decided to shutter over 50 schools, Stewart School included. 

This decision caused an uproar, as it reeked of gentrification and blatant catering to Uptown's elite. It was also a vicious punch in the gut to the poor and homeless! The closing is more than just the sad reality of children losing their neighborhood school, which included kids that stayed at Cornerstone Community Outreach (the homeless shelter I work at). Almost anyone I spoke to in the community wanted the abandoned school to become something redemptive, like a community center, food co-op, subsidized housing, or another homeless shelter. As the building was gutted, we watched the systematic criminalizing, targeting, and isolating of those who are poor and homeless. Meetings were held, but the poor and activists were not listened to at all, the goal of our alderman and his friends was plain and simple: displace a bunch of actual Uptown residents and create luxury housing that the poor could never afford! 

I watched the playgrounds get torn down, I saw the police slowly drive through that stretch and frequently ask for IDs, and I noticed how the park benches disappeared. Despite the targeting, they couldn't eradicate the community, as another Tent City formed in the grass. It grew, and people were being helped and supported, only for the authorities to eventually come in with their military weaponry, uniforms, fences, and aggressive threats of criminal trespassing, shutting them out with nowhere to go! Shunned and rejected once again by the very ones paid to serve and protect.

I know an elderly man who told me how his father was Stewart School’s janitor and how he used to help out! Decades later he ended up sleeping in a tent opposite the abandoned school, only to be forced out and remain homeless by the armed authorities. Sadly this man passed away about a month ago, but he remained homeless and used to sit daily on the local Church steps with the luxury lofts looming eerily in the background, shut out and excluded from the place that meant so much to him! Community has been lost by this gated luxury apartment complex with "no trespassing" signs and security cameras everywhere. No one plays soccer, no one sits and chats to their friends, no kids climb up the playground equipment, and all the people who invested so much into this once vibrant area could never afford their elaborate prices. 

Even though the Stewart School blues and other gentrifying tragedies form dark clouds over Uptown, there are forces that outshine those clouds. You can never discount the amazing resilience and courage of those being ostracized and marginalized. Also, there’s a strong undercurrent and bond of community-minded grass-roots people who keep resisting, keep fighting, and keep “loving their neighbors as themselves”! Despite the empire’s concerted efforts, our job is to persevere and compassionately provide hope to those who think there’s none.

My brief daily trek reveals a community of caring people who continue to come together to help one another out and lift those up who've been knocked down! I often see the humble limp of one neighbor, he's a cheerful man who was once homeless and in the pits of despair. Through a few of us networking together, he found his home. Through loving compassion he found family. He's been in his crib about 10 years now, and he still thanks us every time we bump into each other. We are a community that lifts up those struggling and includes the ostracized. This is the beauty of Uptown! This is what our neighborhood is truly about!