 So let's get into it. Again, my name is Alessandra Keldron and I'm the Associate Communications Director for ProPublica, Illinois. I hope you've had a chance to read the story. Our panelists will be discussing this evening. The investigation looks at Madison Street and East Garfield Park, which was known as the heart of the West Side and once thrived as a commercial strip lined with businesses. But today, Madison Street and East Garfield Park, the East Garfield Park neighborhood are filled with empty lots and vacant storefronts, the devastating consequences of generations of government and private sector neglect. Tonight, we'll talk about the history and current state of Madison Street and what steps can be taken to restore the neighborhood. And today's event is also co-sponsored by Block Club Chicago and the tribe. I would like to mention that one of our scheduled panelists, Monty Gray, from out of the past records, unfortunately won't be able to join us this evening, but we still have a great panel for you. So with that, I'll go ahead and introduce our panelists. We have Siri Hibbler. She is the CEO of the Garfield Park Chamber of Commerce and grew up in Garfield Park. David Doig, who is a community developer and former West Side resident, he has also held a number of positions in city government, including superintendent of the Chicago Park District and first deputy commissioner for the city's department of planning and development. We also have joining us, Marshall Hatch Jr., who is also from the West Side. He and his father, Reverend Hatch Sr., founded the Maafa Redemption Project. He is also a member of the Garfield Park Wellness Collaborative. And we also have Tony Briscoe, reporter for ProPublica, Illinois, and one of the authors of the investigation. But first, I'll throw it over to Tiffany Walden, who grew up on the West Side and is co-founder and editor-in-chief of the tribe, a digital media platform showcasing innovative content to reshape the narrative of Black Chicago. Tiffany. So much for having me, everyone. Hi, my name is Tiffany Walden. I am the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the tribe, and I'm honored to be here with such prestigious leaders in the community and also with the reporters at ProPublica and Black Club Shy. Madison Street is near and dear to me. I grew up on the West Side off of Lexington and Pulaski in North Blondale, and it was a core piece of my upbringing. It was a core piece of my, you know, even birth story. My father had a car wash on Madison Street growing up that was, you know, really popular. And over the years, you know, I just watched him, you know, pour so much into that car wash and not really get the resources that he needed to keep it going. And he ended up having to close it when, you know, I was getting ready to leave out of grammar school and go into high school. But I passed it every day. I went to grammar school in Oak Park at St. Catherine, St. Lucie, and my ride from Pulaski down to Austin every day was down Madison. So I saw that street, you know, fall further and further into dilapidation growing up. And it was heartbreaking for me because my family and my uncles told me so many great stories about Madison Street, how they used to walk from Lexington Downs to Madison Street to shop, how they used to go to the theaters there. My mom saw so many crucial movies on Madison Street when she was growing up. And, you know, I didn't get that experience because the way that it looks today is pretty much how it looked when I was growing up. So a big part of my work was starting The Tribe, which is a digital media platform that we started in 2017 like losing track of time in 2017 to reshape the narrative of Black Chicago. A real reason why I wanted to start The Tribe was because I wanted to tell those stories about the West Side. So often people throw shade at the West Side, growing up and going to Northwestern University in Evanston. I have friends from the South Side and they were just like, how did you get here from the West Side? Like, ew. You know, so there's so much dynamics that and so many stereotypes that people have about the West Side of Chicago. And we get left behind a lot. And so a lot of my work is dedicated to growing up on the West Side to my grandmother coming from Mississippi and building her roots on the West Side, owning a home on the West Side and me growing up in that home. So shout out to ProPublica for that story. You know, we really needed to see the depths of how far this runs in terms of the government's role in the decline of Madison Street and the West Side in general. And I'm honored to be here to speak to you all in the beginning of this important conversation. So thank you again. You can follow us at The Tribe. It's The Tribe with 2is.com. I've written about the West Side and my family's history of the West Side. So I'm looking forward to learning more. Thank you so much, Tiffany. Now I'd like to introduce you to our moderator for the night, Pascal Sabino. Pascal is a reporter with Black Club who covers North Londale, Austin and other West Side communities. Pascal. Thank you for the introduction, Alessandra. And thank you to all of our panelists for joining us. And thank you everybody else who's tuning in today. I wanna start off by just kind of recounting the story that I think a lot of people hear about the West Side of Chicago, particularly Madison Street. They say that when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, that riots tore through the city and hit Madison Street particularly hard. They say that all of these buildings, all of these businesses were burned down essentially and never rebuilt. We'll get more about the nuances of that conversation later, but I wanna start off by asking you, Siri, about just what does that really mean? Like what was your memory of Madison Street and Garfield Park? What has that been like and what has the disinvestment that has followed done to that part of the city? Well, thank you. Thank you guys for first of all inviting us on me on the panel. I really appreciate it and I love that story that you guys did regarding the Garfield Park community in the West Side. So it certainly told a lot to people and informed folks that were not aware. So it was a very informative story that you guys did and we certainly got feedback from people around the country asking us questions about it, that we're able to read it. So thank you again for that. The West Side, for me, I was born and raised on the West Side of Chicago in the 60s. And so for me, it was just, my first jobs were on Madison Street. And I remember attending or high school, I need the job, three sisters was up there, a lot of clothing stores, a lot of nice clothing stores, shoe stores, bakers, all those kind of stores were on Madison Street. We had big box retailers up there. And we also had entrepreneurs, black entrepreneurs, Italian and so on. So these folks were able to hire teenagers like myself and the community, which is lacking today. There's no opportunity for the kids like what we had. And I grew up seeing African American entrepreneurs working for two black pharmacists on the West Side of Chicago that had their own pharmacy. That was my, seeing these folks, these guys were entrepreneurs that taught me a lot. And as a child, I didn't realize that I was learning from these African American entrepreneurs to be a business owner, which has helped to shape me into the entrepreneur that I am today. And to come back and to see that all the buildings are torn down on Madison Street besides a few that are left between independence and what Karloff and Keeler. I mean, it's devastating. I grew up on Fulton and Kenzie. I also lived in the K-Town area on Keel Dare and Washington. And so there was grocery stores there. We never had a problem getting fresh produce in our own community. And there was so much fun until we didn't want to leave the West Side of Chicago to go downtown and have fun and party or anything. Everything was being done, was right there in our community. Everyone loved each other. I could walk down Home and Avenue past Garfield Park at midnight coming from a party and didn't have to worry about anybody bothering me, going all the way to Fulton and Kenzie. So it was just a great place to live on the West Side. I have nothing but fond memories. Of course, you had your little challenges here and there. Every neighborhood does. But we had nice lawns. The kids could go outside and play. I remember graduating from Beiler Elementary. We could play hopscotch. We could do things outside. Double Dutch. Now you don't see the kids outside. Kids don't know what double Dutch is. They don't know what playing hopscotch is. The guys, the young teenage guys, they didn't have to worry about getting shot, walking down the street, just going to the store. So much has happened when you take investment out of the community. When you tear down buildings and you leave bacon lots and kids have to pass by trash and bacon lots every day going to school. It's horrible. We didn't have that experience on this West Side. So no matter what other people thought about the West Side, we were a very happy people over here. And we had fun. But right now, coming back after all those years, that I was gone and coming back to see that, it just went down to nothing. It's like how it just disappeared. It's crazy. So it was really, you know, it was devastating for me to see that. Thank you for sharing that, Siri. I think it's so important to remember that the way things are, isn't the way things have always been, and that they're not the way things always have to be, that we can imagine new futures that are beyond the circumstances that we're in right now. And so I think it's really interesting that a lot of time, the narrative commonly goes, oh, riots happened. You know, MLK was assassinated, riots happened. And then this community, you know, went through a lot of hardship, but we know that that hardship didn't start in 1968. We know that it was happening systemically from the city, from, you know, the private sector as well. We know that that was happening long before that. And so I want to kick it to you, David. Could you explain to me a little bit what that means when we're talking about the disinvestment that was happening even before this event that really punctuated it and created an attorney point in the community? Yeah, I think it's a great point, Pascal. I think there were a lot of kind of currents going on, probably in the late 50s, early 60s, that kind of culminated with what happened after Dr. King's death. And a lot of it was around businesses and industry leaving. I mean, if you look at Laundale, North Laundale as an example, I mean, Laundale at one time had the international headquarters of Sears Roebuck. It had international harvester. I mean, you had Western Electric. I mean, 40,000 people working at Cermak and Cicero. And when those companies started to leave, you know, Sears moved downtown, Western Electric, you know, and then they got bought up by the, all the telephone companies that started to disinvest. So you lost, in the case of Laundale, over about a 15-year period, you lost over 50,000 jobs. And that was devastating to the community. And so what started to happen is then, and then you had, you started to have disinvestment and depopulation. And so people started to leave. And I think what you've seen, again, in the case of Laundale, in 1960, Laundale had 120,000 people. Today it's less than 30,000. And so all of that depopulation leads to, I think, a sense of kind of disinvestment. Because if you don't have population, you can't support retail. If you don't have population, you can't support the schools. The civic organizations start to break down. And so you have this downward cycle of disinvestment that all kind of combines. I think the riots in 68 were, in some ways, a flashpoint or maybe an exclamation point in that. But it was certainly going on well before that, and then continued well after the riots in 68. Very briefly. Well, I mean, I think it's interesting. A lot of times population and depopulation of the West Side comes into play, but then you're kind of thinking like, oh, is this a chicken or the egg problem? Yeah. I mean, there are people leaving because of disinvestment. There's disinvestment happening because people are leaving. And so just very quickly, David, I want to ask you a quick follow-up. What kinds of strategies, policy strategies from the city are we seeing in that era, leading up to 19th, that kind of set the framework for all of this. Yeah. I mean, I think you saw as companies left as resources left, as people left, you know, you saw the city then start to pull out some, you know, city services. So you saw, you know, a decline in public investments, so streets and roads and in schools. I mean, all these things started to kind of devolve. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't like over a course of like a year or two years or five years. I mean, this was a consistent policy of disinvestment over really about a 40-year period. And so I often say like, you know, our neighborhoods didn't get this way in 10 years or 20 years. I mean, it's been 40 years of basically disinvestment. So when we think about what kind of strategies need to be used to redevelop them, you can't think about a five-year or 10-year strategy. I mean, it's going to take 40 years to rebuild, to rebuild our neighborhoods. And so I do think that all of these things kind of played together. So you saw a decrease in city services. You saw, you know, retail pull out. You started to see other community institutions leave. And so all of that has kind of led to this cycle of decline. Thank you for that, David. Now I'm interested in what that disinvestment really looks like, really feels like today. And so I wanted to ask you, Reverend Marshall, I ask you because if you do so much amazing work with the MOAFA redemption project, which to me seems like a program that's really aimed at addressing some of the impacts of this deep and long legacy of removing opportunities from people, really pushing people, backing people into a corner. And so I'm curious what's your perspective on like, what is the long-term results of that disinvestment and what kinds of manifestations of that are we seeing today? Thank you for the question, Pascal. And thank you, Siri, David, Tony. Like you, Siri, I grew up in Garfield, West Garfield, to be exact. I'm actually in the sanctuary of New Mount Pilgrim Church, right on Washington and Kildare, 4301 West Washington. And we acquired this space. This used to be the old St. Mel Holy Ghost parish. As I understand it, the neighborhood was occupied by Irish immigrants, German immigrants, and then the Italians and then the Eastern European Jews. And then the history of white flight. And we mentioned Dr. King. He didn't come to Chicago in 68. He came in 66 to expose the slums. And as a result of his assassination, the Fair Housing Act was passed. I mean, we can't lose that fact. I mean, that was blood on that law. And to see what the Trump administration has done to further gut that law that didn't really have the teeth it needed to address the residential segregation that has plagued the city for decades. And so thank you for grounding the conversation in context, David, because I think that's vitally important. I went off to college from the West side. I went to Bates college in Lewiston, Maine of all places. Don't ask me how I got there, but they paid for school. And so I went, but I remember coming back. And I played basketball there for four years. And so I wasn't able to come back periodically for Christmas break for Thanksgiving. I wasn't able to come back. So when I graduated and came back, I just remember being incensed that it appeared that things hadn't changed exactly what Siri was saying. I remember growing up going to some of the black owned spots right on Madison to, to, you know, get my Philly cheese steak. Going to Uncle Ramis, right. And, and, and seeing when I got back, just how much though it had devolved. I didn't know it could get worse. And effectively what we see now, everybody knows it is an open air drug market. Right in the center of Garfield Park. And so you asked what the, you know, what the manifestation is of this public policy of this disinvestment. It's like death by a thousand cuts. I mean, we cite this, this data point about life expectancy. Now it kind of rolls off of everybody's lips, you know, the gap in life expectancy that exists between Garfield Park and the loop. I think in 2017, it was 16 years. But what does that look like exactly? It looks like young men standing on corners. It looks like children dropping out of school. And so we have to talk about education in East Garfield Park. I was fortunate to, to go to private and same male. And for me, and so many others coming out of the congregation, that school was really an oasis in the neighborhood. I mean, it was privately run black owned, had a faith ethic, you know, and an expectation of excellence. But that should be the norm. So it is about education. It is about housing. Right. I mean, we, what else does it look like? We've seen what 21st century redlining looks like just by reading that report that WB, WBZ did from 2012 to 2018, I believe less than 2% of investment coming from chase to black neighborhoods. I mean, we see the manifestation. We live it. And we should be livid. And so you can call it a riot. You know, some consider it uprising. The reality is we should, we should call this what it is. This is Chicago is a city of neighborhoods and the black neighborhoods have, have always kind of shuttered, have been shuttered. They haven't received the kind of investment that other neighborhoods have just one more thing on, on policing and on criminal justice reform. I think we should also talk about the impact of mass incarceration on neighborhoods like ours. I remember reading Tana Hasse coach, the case for reparation for reparations, and he talked about the, of course, great migration. And leading to a lot of these things as well, how the city responded to millions of black folk actually fleeing the South, the tears of the South, and also seeking economic opportunity in the North. Chicago, Detroit, New York. But now I mean, what, what we're witnessing is that black folk are tired. We're, we're tired of always getting the short end of the stick. This, this generation that we're in now, and we're in a time of season to really do something about it. We're not really interested in, in, in being patient. And so 21 2020 and the pandemic has exposed a lot of the fault lines, but 2021 should be a year of restoration, reimagination and black reconstruction as, you know, as it comes to East and West Garfield Park. Thank you, Marshall. Appreciate that insight. I think it's a great question. I think it's a great question. It's a great question. And it makes me think a lot about how. A lot of times old problems get new names. So we used to have slavery. Now we have mass incarceration. We used to have redlining, but now like you said, the WB easy report showed us that. The policies of redlining might have changed, but the result is exactly the same. So I really appreciate that insight. My next question is for you, Tony. I'm interested in. There's this story about rioting and looting. Leading to businesses leaving the West side. But there's obviously a lot more nuance to that, that really too often doesn't really get explored. And so it seems to me like. We shift blame away from individuals or onto individuals, even though the problems are structured into our society, right? They're, they're really high level problems, but we put the blame onto individuals. So I want to ask you when it comes to the narrative as a journalist, when it comes to the narrative around the West side, around the disinvestment of the West side, what's really missing from here and why is context so important for the way in which we talk about and think about things like writing and looting, especially since we're seeing a lot of these conversations come back this year. Absolutely. I appreciate the question. I think that, you know, a lot of the panelists have hit on this already, but I mean, you have to have that historical context to really put these things into frame to, to, you know, I think that a lot of, you know, people don't really understand how great Madison street once was, and you really have to look at the arc of, of the history of this street. So where, I mean, folks used to talk about it in, in terms of, I guess there was an expression that, you know, if, if there was something, I mean, if, I guess, you know, if, if you couldn't find something on Madison street, it didn't used to exist that there were grocery stores, that there were roller rinks, pharmacies, pretty much there, there was these communities were self-contained. And to see it go from that to what it is now, I think that one of the residents I spoke to in that Britain said it best when she said, you know, it's, it's a shame that, you know, kids are growing up where this hyper vacancy is perceived as normal. This should not be perceived as normal, especially considering what the community used to be. And so I think that we, what we really wanted to do for this article was to see, well, how did the community get to this place to question the very nature of how we got here. And a lot of people, you know, assumed that, you know, they point to the riots and that, you know, what we found was that that's a really gross oversimplification. Now, certainly there are places on the West side that have been vacant for some 50 odd years since the riots. And that's a problem within itself. And stagnation is a problem as well. But at the same time, what we were finding more and more as we dug into the property histories was that, you know, there, it's like, you know, Reverend Hatch said, and that there was this slow deterioration of, you know, death by a thousand cuts. It's probably equally as painful to see, you know, buildings deteriorate, to see this disinvestment and to watch a building go from a grocery store into a vacant lot. And so, you know, it really is the accountability. I mean, the owners really falls on, you know, multiple parties. There is, you know, obviously certain levels of government that are responsible for the well-being of the city. And then there's private market forces, which, you know, there are certainly landowners who there's really no accountability for, you know, folks who own the land. There's no really mechanism for them to do something with it. So that's why we see a lot of stagnation that we do here. But, you know, also another, you know, end of this thing is that we've had really aggressive pushes of demolitions without really, you know, you know, there was a lot of, you know, removal and urban renewal without actual redevelopment, which is why these neighborhoods have seen so much vacant land. And, you know, it's a multi-pronged complex problem. And I'm just really glad that we were able to kind of break it down in those kind of facets. Thank you, Tony. Yeah, I think it's so important to kind of break things down so that you can see the multiple things that are operating because we see it over and over. Like we blame a community for the problems that they face when the reality is those problems are woven into like the very fabric of like the stones our city has been built on. And so thinking about how things are going right now, we're in the middle of a global catastrophe, a pandemic. I want to talk about how this legacy of disinvestment on the west side has been, you know, interacted with a coronavirus. Obviously, businesses all over our suffering in the United States, federal government, state government on every level, there have been all of these efforts to invest in communities to make sure that businesses don't go south. But this question is for you, Siri. Do you think that this legacy of disinvestment and the distrust that has sowed between business owners, community members, and the city of Chicago, do you think that that history makes it really difficult for business owners and community members to take advantage of things like the PPP grants and a lot of the relief that was made available for a lot of businesses, but maybe not as many businesses in some areas were able to take advantage of? Well, there's definitely clearly some distrust. You know, I mean, most of the business owners have been there for 30 years or more. They watched the decline as well as everyone else did of that area, but they were committed to the people, committed to the community in hopes, hoping every day, praying every day that this thing would change only to see it continue to decline. So as far as them taking advantage of any opportunities, as far as support, financial support, they have never, most of them never received any type of city funding. Garfield Park businesses out there on Madison and Blaskey, they are in a TIF district. There was no, absolutely no reason for those businesses to be denied TIF funds for all of these years for the past decade or two, and they have been constantly denied. So they have no funds to fix up their facade to make it look beautiful, like the West Loop and other places that receive all these TIF funds. These guys are constantly being denied, and that's where the distrust comes from. So when we talked to them about, okay, did you apply for the PPP? Oh yeah, I did. Nothing. Okay. Did you apply for something with the city? Yes, didn't get it. So there's, you know, these guys are not getting any support at all. And one of the main things that they have invested in, especially those that own the buildings, are the TIF funds. Those owners and those business owners and those landlords, they should have an opportunity to gain access to those funds. You know, we recently tried to put a SSA in the community, special service area. You have Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, all these places that are beautifying those shopping districts, they have SSAs ran by chambers. So we did the same thing. Finally, last year, put that together with the support of the community and business owners and they were excited about it. And our application got pre-approved only to have it denied for them to come back to the city and say, oh, no, you can't do it because the Alderman doesn't want it. The Alderman is going to veto it. Alderman veto SSA that has nothing to do with him. It has everything to do with the property owners. That is that those funds come from the state, state manage those funds, give it to the city. And the city give it out to the community so that we can beautify Garfield Park, make it walkable, make it, you know, a community that you're proud to shop in, but our kids are proud to walk down the street and live in. Why would someone want to deny the SSA? And so that's what we deal with. We did the businesses, our chamber, all of us, we're dealing with politics. It's all politics and it's all quickish and just dumb, stupid stuff. I'm just going to say it is dumb and stupid, you know, but these people that are, that are over these communities, unfortunately did not grow up in Garfield Park. They don't have passion that we have for Garfield Park. They think that I'm a problem because I have passion. I know I'm feeling pain for these babies. I'm feeling pain that they have to walk down the street and they will never be able to say, I grew up in a fantastic neighborhood. We had so much fun on the West side. I can say that they will never be able to say that right now. And so that's why I get upset and I get angry because it's not about your, you as a politician, get off yourself. This is about this community. When is it going to be about the community and not the politics? So our business owners, they just, they're, they're holding on by a thread and they, and they refuse to leave. They're fighting their way through this thing. The riots, all of that. Why? Because they love the people, all of them. I mean, we have Arab owners. We have Asian owners. They love this community as well as the African-Americans do. Thank you, Siri. So that kind of brings me to the next thing I'm interested in hearing about, which is accountability. I think that there's probably a lot of levels of accountability going on here, especially when we're talking about one of the biggest, most sprawling bureaucracies in the country. And so Tony, you talked a little bit about accountability and why it's so hard, but I'm interested in hearing from you, David, could you tell me a little bit about where does some of the accountability for just systemic disinvestment and, you know, disinvestment, not just economically, but you know, we're talking about parks and schools and all of this kind of stuff. Where does the accountability lie there and kind of why does it take decades and decades for folks in these spaces to finally be held accountable and for, for these changes to finally be made? Yeah, that's a great question, Pascal. And I think, I think Tony touched on this. I mean, I think there's a lot of different levels to this. Certainly government has played a role in this in all levels of government. I mean, if you look at the disparities, I think even when I was working at the park district, I mean, you look at the disparities of parks, the west side relative to those on the north side of the late front. I mean, there's a different level of care and maintenance. And, you know, that's kind of built into the culture of a lot of these bureaucracies. You see that with the, with the, with the Board of Ed, you see it with the CTA. I mean, every level, every level, there are these disparities. And, and so it is systemic and it, and it, you know, it, it, it root, it's rooted in, in, I think, government policies that, that have segregated, that have discriminated against the west side. Reverend Hatch mentioned the, you know, the, the healthcare, the death gap. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's across the board. It's systemic. And so, you know, our, I think the approach has to be similarly, it's got to be comprehensive. I mean, this is, you don't find solutions that are, you know, just an education solution or just a, you know, an anti-violence solution or an economic development or a housing. I mean, all of these things have got to work together. If you're going to really see long-term systemic change. And I really appreciate what Siri said about, you know, holding, holding our elected officials accountable. I mean, yeah, the Alderman, they're the, you know, they're the elected officials. We've got to, we've got to hold them accountable. We've got to hold our county commissioners accountable. We've got to hold, you know, the mayor accountable, the state reps, state center. I mean, every level of government has got to be held accountable for these things. And it can't just be like every four years. I think, I think it's like, it's easy to get charged up, you know, during election, but it's got to be, it's got to be ongoing. And it's got to be consistent. And, and you've got to, you've got to constantly be vigilant in, in making sure that they're, that they would be responsive. It's, you know, I think a lot of times, you know, Alderman are in there for a long time. They get comfortable. And, and so they have a certain way of doing things. And that has worked for them. And so maybe it's time to start to disrupt some of those, some of those kind of, you know, some of those kind of systems in, in some of those politics. I was encouraged last year when we saw a whole new slate of, of Alderman come in. I think it was the biggest, biggest change in the last probably 34 years. That, that's great. We need more young people. We need more engaged community organizations. All of these things have got to work together. If we're going to see long-term improvements. Thank you, David. So we're getting close to our time for Q and A from the audience. So I want to ask one more question for all of you. And we'll start with, with Marshall. And this is the same question for everybody. So I want to ask what projects are you seeing in the neighborhood. That really just show the most promise of, a lot of people are facing people with slamming and having to deal with them. For reversing some of that history of neglect because we know that despite a lot of the predominant media narratives of, you know, the same old tired stories every time of gangbangers, drug dealers, shootings out West. We know there's so much more going on. And there are tremendous community leaders who are really, really investing in the places that the city has not invested. Give us some hope for showing us what things could look like. Thank you, Pascal. David mentioned all of the folks we hold accountable. I would agree with all of that and add that, of course, we hold ourselves accountable for what we do in our lifetimes and the roads that we pave for coming generations. And so Ma'afa, for instance, is Swahili for the great disaster. It's been a word that's been used to try to convey what it must have felt like to be at the bottom of an empire like America and the social structure. But also, how does one respond to that catastrophe? And so that's why we call it the Ma'afa Redemption Project. It's actually a ministry of New Mount Program Church. And we invest in young men ages 18 to 30, black and brown, providing housing, workforce development training, and the construction trades, and horticulture, life coaching, so on and so forth. And we've joined recently with the Garfield Park Community Council with HSI, Habilitative Systems Incorporated Institute for Nonviolence, Bethel New Life, Westside United, and Rush to create the Garfield Park Wellness Collaborative. And one of the things that we're trying to do in the near future is bring a health and wellness center to Garfield Park so that we can, of course, tackle that death gap head on. And so Westside United, for instance, their stated mission is to cut that life expectancy gap in half by 2030, which is a very ambitious goal. And I think our work is to try to help do that. And so again, holding ourselves accountable, but also working together. So I'd love to work with Siri, love to work with David Doi to get their ideas on how we create the new Garfield Park east and west for our populations. Thank you, Marshall. So just want to give everybody else just a quick moment to answer that same question. What's the project that you see the most hope in in the area? Tony. Sorry. Yeah, no, I would say that it appears that the city has a strategy now that they're going to start with housing first and try and build up housing along community anchors along the conservatory, along the green line, which is promising. But also there is a mixed use development that is coming or is slated to begin along Fifth Avenue, which I think if any place has been hard hit by stagnated land, it is Fifth Avenue, probably to a much larger extent, even than Madison Street. I think that that was really one of the places for me that really drove that home for me because it was actually a time that I went out on a breaking news story and I spoke to a woman who recalls the 68 riots and she lived just off of Fifth Avenue and the entire place behind her home, the entire block was essentially raised at that point and had set vacant for 50 some years later. So to finally see a commercial corridor like that being prioritized for a mixed use development, not only housing, but a space below for retail development is a very encouraging sign for East Garfield Park. That's great, thank you, Tony. David, I want to get your answer on this. Yeah, real quick, I think what Reverend Hatch mentioned in terms of creating this wellness zone, I mean, one of the great strengths of the West Side is its proximity to the medical district and I mean, that's tens of thousands of jobs. And so I think building off of some of the strength of the medical district, providing whether that's healthcare or medical office or I think there's a real economic opportunity around that. The other thing I would just point to is the work of United Power, which is a group of church-based organizations that just recently got approved for a thousand new homes on the West Side. And I think for the first time that I can remember, the city's putting resources at developing those lots. And so I think getting to this issue of population increase, I think that's a very encouraging development. Thank you, David and Siri, just about one minute. What do you think is the most promising project that you see on the West Side? Well, I first wanna definitely glad to hear about the health and wellness around Pulaski area. That is a conversation I had with Dr. Anso at Rush Hospital a couple of years ago when they wanted to join in our project, the rebirth of Garfield Park. So we talked a lot about bringing health and wellness to the West Side. We don't only have one medical facility. So I'm really happy to hear that that is moving forward with that group of organizations. The projects that we're working on is the rebirth of Garfield Park. We have raised $100 million for that project. We will be bringing forward the design and technology center. We're looking at that as well as some life sciences. And we are also gonna be having 35 retail spaces from East Garfield Park going to West Garfield Park. We also have over 400 units coming in the Garfield Park area. So we are still moving forward with our plan. We're not allowing anybody, Alderman or anyone to stop us with our plan. So we're going to build in Garfield Park and we're going to continue to push forward and create over 2,000 jobs for our people here. So we're excited about our project. And we recently just launched the first staffing professional staffing agency on the West Side of Chicago. We're at California and Lake Street. So we look forward to start hiring a lot of people in the professional field, information technology, general labor. So that office will open on January 11th and we'll have people in here doing resumes, doing applications and we will be placing people and professional jobs. So we are creating that type of change in our community. Thank you, Siri. Thank you. All right, I'm gonna pass it back over to Alessandra for our Q and A section. Thank you, Pascal. So thank you so much for everyone that's been asking questions. As I mentioned earlier, if you're interested in asking a question, feel free to click the Q and A icon at the bottom of your screen. Well, a lot of great questions. We'll try to get as many as we can in the time that we do have. So with that said, there's a question that actually comes from, that I thought was really interesting and just how it might play into the redevelopment and the ideas, but coming from a younger age group and what are some of the, this is from an anonymous attendee, but what are some ways you'd like to see people my age in the 13 to 29 age group or 25, sorry, age group engage in repairing and building the community. What part can we play? So looking specifically at that demographic, how can they be part of rebuilding the community? Is there anyone to answer or is it? I can jump in first. I believe that out of East Garfield Park's 19,000 residents and I believe West Garfield Park has 18,000 residents and it's comparable for both communities, but in East Garfield Park, I think 58% of the population under the age of 35 and I think in West Garfield Park is closer to 60% might be a little lower. And so out of all of the challenges that Garfield Park has, I think the greatest asset are the people and specifically young people. And so I think we should be talking about again, education, but also like non-traditional education and training and skills development, skilling up around IT, around coding, around construction, I mentioned horticulture before, those are some of the plans we have in mind. I will also add that we need to be thinking about leadership development and again, non-traditional. And so development around community organizing, development around public speaking, like we need to be investing in the young people in these neighborhoods and asking them what you think the new Garfield Park should look like and the arts as well. I mentioned Numel Pilgrim Church. This is a church that has invested heavily in the arts, specifically Black-inspired stained glass. And we've leaned on that art to inspire us in challenging times. And we recently built a music production studio. And so we'll be able to do podcasts and develop other multimedia content that keeps us hopeful, but also reminds us who we are. We are resilient people. Come what may, we come from a resilient stock and we were made for this moment to reimagine Garfield Park again for generations to come. I certainly would like to encourage the young people to get involved through my nonprofit organization where you're on the West Side, Field of Dreams Visionary Center. We've been helping homeless families and low-income and ex-offenders receive jobs, housing. We've won several awards for the work that we've done. We were seeing on average over 400 people a month in our place and receiving about a hundred calls a day. So I didn't know that the deed was so great when I came back here in this community at the end of 2016. So we encourage you to get involved with the nonprofits. We encourage you to learn, that's how you're really gonna learn about your community. Okay, really get involved with the nonprofits. There are many here in our Garfield Park community that you can volunteer for. And you will learn so much about your community about how you can help. Okay, let God speak to you. I'm also a minister. So you let God speak to you and let him guide you on what it is that you can do to make a difference. We are here to help you, but you definitely should join with your nonprofits. And we encourage you to join the chamber. We just launched a young entrepreneur chamber called the Chicago Black Chambers Alliance. So we are encouraging black entrepreneurs to be part of that chamber. So if you wanna go into business, we would teach you about starting a business, business plan development, how to grow into a multi-million dollar business. You can do that. So just reach out to us. Reach out to the chamber, reach out to the other nonprofits and get involved, get involved. Thank you. The next question we have from David, could anyone help clarify how the TIF district system of investment is supposed to work, how it has failed Madison Street and surrounding neighborhoods and how it should be restructured to be more efficient? Is it a system that is destined to fail? Yeah, that's a great question. I think, I mean, I think TIF is a tool and it's been used in some cases well and in other cases not. I think the fundamental idea in Siri touched on this is that the taxes that are created within the district stay in that district. And really it's fundamentally an economic development tool. And I think what has happened is that over time, the city has used it as an infrastructure tool. And so they've used TIF money to build streets. They've used TIF money to build schools. Not that there's anything wrong with those things but those end up diluting I think the intent of TIF which is really fundamentally about building business and helping businesses grow. And so I think that is an issue that probably needs to be resolved. TIF was created by state law and the city has used TIF in a lot of cases but not always strategically. And certainly as Siri pointed out when you think about the business owners along Madison it's terrible that they have not been able to benefit from the very taxes that they're paying. They're paying into these TIF funds and then the city is using those TIF funds to fund other things. And sometimes they end up moving TIF money from one district to another. And there's a lot of kind of shell games that are played with TIF money moving it around for really what the city wants to prioritize not necessarily what the community wants. Thank you. Another question we have here from Marissa. What is the biggest obstacle to community development and not just real estate development but more of a holistic development of the people in the community? I'll think about that one. I think that the biggest barrier is goes back to this question of trust and accountability. And I think that a lot of times communities particularly when developers come in or they see folks trying to do something they immediately get suspicious and for good reason. I mean, there's been a lot of abuse and I think there's a lot of examples where developers have done the wrong thing by communities. And so I think it starts with engaging the community and I wanna just give a shout out to Reverend Hatch. I mean, that has been fundamental to what they've done is it's constant community engagement. You have to engage the community in the planning. You've got to engage the community when you start development. You've got to be accountable so that when you're doing things you're reporting back to the community you're asking for their inputs. But that's really the only way to make this sustainable is it's gotta be in collaboration with the community with the input of the community. And ultimately the community has to benefit. I get very frustrated a lot of times with a lot of these philanthropic or bank programs to talk about, well, we made X amount of loans and we've invested this amount of money. And my question is that that's all fine but has the community benefited? Has the community gotten better? And if you're not measuring that all you're doing is measuring outputs and not outcomes. That's very true. If I could just piggyback off of that a little bit I think that one of the major gripes that we came across in the neighborhood too was East and West Garfield Park not being a part of and best Southwest. And essentially in talking to the city about that too one of the interesting pieces of this that we found was by virtue I guess of it's vacantness it seemed that that in itself disqualified East Garfield Park for program funds that were intended for economically distressed areas. So given that we've established that this deterioration has happened over decades. I mean, I guess that the question becomes how does a place come back to where the city is in this triage mode where some places are considered revivable and others aren't? And I think that that's still an open question. Certainly. Just to piggyback off that, well said Tony. And best Southwest and so we applied for a quality of life plan through LISC and we were considered finalists and we didn't make the cut. And when we asked why it was exactly that point the neighborhoods that were chosen was almost like low hanging fruit in terms of being able to put a plan together and claim success for that plan in a short period of time. Whereas neighborhoods like this is maybe beyond reproach. I don't know, but I think another barrier though is just around community members and community-based organizations coming together. And just to be honest, in neighborhoods like ours there is a lot of infighting for crumbs because we've been starved for so long. And so we have to do our best to protect the interest of the neighborhood as we see the developers from the outside salivating over the land that our grandparents lived on. So the challenges are great. But again, I remain hopeful because I choose to I think the opportunity is now to do something about it put our heads together, put our resources together and not just financial to claim the agency that we already have and the ownership that we can further develop in terms of a barrier. I think that oftentimes the barrier is with us and we have to figure out a way to work together. Thank you so much. And I'm actually, I wish we could answer a lot more of these questions. We will try to see if we can do some, I know a lot of people are asking if there could be like a follow-up discussion. We'll definitely see if we can do that. This has been a great conversation. But with that said, unfortunately we are out of time. I do wanna thank our speakers for today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to all our attendees. On behalf of Black Club Chicago, the tribe and all of us at ProPublica, thank you for joining us. Have a great night. Have a great night. Thank you. You too. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.