Gangland “renewal”
Hyde Park vs. Ingleside
By Will Deitz
Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, home to Barack Obama, Louis Farrakhan, and the University of Chicago, lies directly to the east of a 372 acre field of grass. For the most part this field, otherwise known as Washington Park, is perfectly useful for ultimate frisbee, soccer, baseball, and softball games, and even the odd cricket match, though sporadic shards of broken glass render it less than idyllic for picnicking or letting the children run amok. In his desperate attempt to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago, Mayor Richard Daly has dog-eared Washington Park to be the home of a 95,000-person stadium, with a purported cost clocking in at a cool $350 million. “Urban renewal” is a phrase that has been heard countless times in relation to this plan.
[Gangs gather in Ingleside.]
[Practice in the park.]
However, this might be the wrong way of going about it. Directly to the west of the park lies Ingleside neighborhood. A far cry from its cross-park neighbor, Ingleside, specifically Garfield Boulevard, is a hotbed for gang activity. This isn’t to say that the grass doesn’t grow there, that happy groups of girls can’t be seen walking down the street unmolested during the daylight hours, or that the only cars that drive through it are 1979 Honda Accords. Rather, normal rule of law simply does not apply in Ingleside, or at least, bears far less weight. A police car, for example, parked less than a block away did nothing to deter a good dozen gangbangers from their initial inclination to “kick [my] ass, take [my] camera, and send [me] on my way.” Permission (and proof that I wasn’t a police officer, in the form of a student ID) was required merely to walk down the street.
The 2016 Olympic bid will likely not be awarded to Chicago, as Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo are also throwing vast amounts of money into their respective Olympic campaigns. But even if it did, building a colossal stadium in the guts of the South Side would not be as simple as those with an “If you build it, it will be gentrified,” attitude might hope. Washington Park is no more destitute or in need of “urban renewal” then any of the countless other slums on Chicago’s South Side, only full of those who might turn their heads sideways at the site of thousands of rental cars rolling down Garfield. Washington Park is not Cabrini Green, and Garfield Boulevard is not about to self-destruct. This is the South Side, and they like it the way it is; Daly should keep that in mind.
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