By Anonymous
Content warning: police threats of violence
The purpose of this article is to give a small update and some insights on the nature of ethnic cleansing going on in Little Village as pertains to the privatization of lands at Kedzie Ave. and 31st St, to give you an idea of the combatants involved and the tactics used in this protracted war.
There have been multiple plans for ethnically cleansing Little Village for years. Little Village is a primarily Indigenous and Mexican community with a unique concentration of people who do not have US citizenship. The kind of social cleansing that gentrification is unleashing in this community is ethnic cleansing.
This ethnic cleansing has been rolling out unevenly with the assistance of the “progressive” Democrat politicians for years. The pandemic was an opportunity to accelerate the process, an opportunity the rulers did use to their advantage.
The attacks are coming in different areas of the neighborhood, and unfortunately neighborhood self-defense is not to the point that an authentic resistance can coordinate responses to the multiple assaults or even report on all of them.
And so I will focus in this article on one small reflection of only one of the aspects of ethnic cleansing occuring in my neighborhood: the privatization of the lands surrounding 31st St. and Kedzie Ave. in Little Village and the eviction of Indigenous neighbors from mid-2020 to September 2021.
Prior to the pandemic there was a small group of Little Villagers trying to raise awareness of the privatization of these then public lands. To our neighbors who did research on the matter, it was obvious something corrupt was occurring. For example, the lands were not sold yet, but there were signs in the area saying that a St. Anthony’s hospital would be built there.
We think this was to give the ‘hood the belief that it was a done deal and nothing could be done.
In a sense, this is true. I believe our current forces and self-organization do not have the power to stop land grabs of this nature, unless there were very unorthodox actions taken upon the rulers involved. Nevertheless, a multiplicity of forces, from anti-authoritarian community forces to simple capitalist competitors, can be a headache to the real people behind this legal and illegal criminality, which is why they will go so far as to jail oppositionists.
As the pandemic rolled on, what we understand to be backdoor deals made this land grab more and more official. Things that were negotiated by the elite locally and translocally independent of formal government authorization or fake community stamps were becoming official. St. Anthony’s hospital’s developer arm, The Chicago Southwest Development Corporation (CSDC), would develop a significant fraction of the land while other backdoor deals are being worked out for other parts of the lands surrounding 31st and Kedzie.[1]
In this privatization we are seeing the conversion of public lands for private profits using public monies to subsidize the entire process. St. Anthony’s is not known for being a good hospital, and it will not be a place for community members to get quality, free healthcare, but it will be profitable for the rulers that run and benefit from the many ways this hospital brings them and their networks’ income and structural security while consolidating their power over us.
If the entire process is subsidized by public funds coming from public lands, one would think all revenue would be public revenue and that the healthcare would be free to all residents. But this is not the case. Perhaps as a result of the hell we put up we may see a tiny fraction of such things happen.
But there’s also the ultimate matter of importance: community consent. There was none. If there were ever any meetings surrounding this privatization, they would have been vaguely framed and last-second meetings, but nothing for the community to be able to meaningfully participate or make any meaningful decisions. There has been no real community consent on these matters.[2]
And so without even proper demolition permits, Saint Anthony’s-Chicago Southwest Development Corporation (SA-CSDC) proceeded to evict my Indigenous neighbors living at 3200 South Kedzie, which is part of the lands surrounding 31st and Kedzie. If you’d like to do research on these neighbors, they were last known as La Casa del Migrante.
This eviction process took place from as early as mid 2020 to September 2021. The process included multiple forms of assaults and psychological warfare that I will not fully list, from occupation, to breaking and entering, and attempted murder.
SA-CSDC did sic the Chicago Police Department on our neighbors to illegally evict them in multiple instances. They ramped up police and security presence on our neighbors to cause every sort of inconvenience, such as ticketing and towing of their vehicles. They gated and blocked entrances to the property that had the effect of making much of their self-employment impossible. And on multiple occasions, the security guards drew their firearms on my neighbors and threatened to murder them.
Every time I walked onto the property, I was fortunate to live only with the fear for a moment that these security guards would blast me away after knowing how they drew guns on my neighbors. Our neighbors at 3200 S. Kedzie lived with that fear 24/7, especially since SA-CSDC did have people intrude inside the building they lived in without my neighbors’ permission.
It was very hard for these neighbors to talk about the struggle they were enduring online. In 2020 my neighbors had a social media presence on Facebook. But within a day of openly conflict with St. Anthony’s hospital on Facebook about the assault they were enduring, their social media account was mysteriously taken down without explanation, which shows us the extent to which SA-CSDC is connected with the social media elite. This shows how important offline relationships are in our struggles.
If it wasn’t for La Casa del Migrante’s fighting back later joined by more and more neighbors who drew attention to this and showed up in person, they would have been evicted in mid-2020.
The local Progressive Democrats were certainly aligned with SA-CSDC during this entire process. When our neighbors went to complain to local “Progressive” alderman Mike Rodriguez, his office’s response was for them to leave (this asshole didn’t even try to argue for a formal eviction process). Though this shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Mike Rodriguez came to power as local alderman from being in the social circles of SA-CSDC and received direct campaign contributions from the very people who are also part of St. Anthony’s Hospital.
It was a cause of distrust among some neighbors who actually know the neighborhood when the local Little Village activist group Únete, which also calls itself a “community development committee”, tried to get alderman Mike Rodriguez into the conversation after this happened. Únete is tied into the same social circles as the alderman and has been seen holding space in Little Village giving platforms to gentrifier solutions.[3] This was responded with by a sharp denunciation by one Little Villager about inviting the class enemy into our spaces on the just-mentioned occasion. If it wasn’t for rooted neighbors with firm anti-authoritarian principles and an actual pulse of what goes on in the hood (instead of chasing every action outside of the community), outside-of-the-hood radicals would’ve stood by and allowed this to happen.
It seems that this instance has been part of rising local community resentment against Rodriguez that is forcing Únete to posture as if they’re also against Rodriguez and the entire elite class rule that Rodriguez works for. One manifestation of this rising resentment was a protest at Rodriguez’ home in March 2021 against the privatization of 31st and Kedzie that Rodriguez is facilitating. A video of some of the protest is available below[4]. This protest was scheduled independently of support being given to the neighbors at 3200 S. Kedzie. Únete was not invited to this protest because of fears they’d give notice to Rodriguez ahead of time.
We should always expect this kind of posturing to happen as neighbors become more discontent. Pro-elite, anti-establishment people will respond and try to blend in in appearance to dupe the population and shift their entire structure accordingly while retaining the same fundamental defense of the same class interests.
Unfortunately, the combined resistance of neighbors across the city was not enough to withstand the SA-CSDC’s illegal eviction of La Casa del Migrante done in collaboration with a well-financed law firm who was very comfortable breaking the law in multiple ways I will not get into and in conjunction with what appears to be a bought Cook County judge who ruptured due process with impossible deadlines for so much documentation, and whom I and others feared would issue illegal arrest orders for anyone, even my neighbors’ attorney, for continuing to resist. Nobody expected such illegality from the court and their attorneys would happen and happen as rapidly as it did, though in hindsight, when having a chance to reflect on the panorama of events from no longer being in the thick of it, it’s a no brainer.
Official, though not certainly legal, orders were issued by September 2021 for my neighbors to vacate.
There wasn’t enough steam to fight back at this point. And the people at 3200 S. Kedzie did vacate in September.
The battle was lost. But this ain’t over.
The purpose of this article is to give a small update and some insights on the nature of ethnic cleansing going on in Little Village as pertains to the privatization of lands at Kedzie Ave. and 31st St, to give you an idea of the combatants involved and the tactics used in this protracted war.
In a future article, I’m told Práxedis will give his thoughts on where victories will come from in the wake of such losses and why we are losing up to this point.
As you might imagine and as future articles shall strengthen the case about, I shouldn’t share my identity, which could be revealed by showing a donation source publicly linked directly to me, since SA-CSDC has a powerful litigious force and justice system in their back pocket. So if this reporting was of value to you, please donate to The Blast via CashApp to $blastmw
End Notes
[1] Adding to our understanding of the backdoor deals was news in 2021 of Stella Wolf’s lawsuit against St. Anthony’s hospital. Stella was a former head of human resources at St. Anthony’s, and in her lawsuit she accuses St. Anthony’s of doing all sorts of backdoor deals with politicians. See “Ex-Saint Anthony HR director says hospital fired her for opposing ‘pay-for-play’ scheme with Madigan, Sandoval” in Cook County Record by Jonathan Bilyk (Jun 18, 2021).
[2] And something which any compañerxs in Little Village must understand if they were to seek the office of alderman (city council person) in our ward, which plays a key role in these local land issues, as much shit as we want to heap on the Progressive Democrats for this stuff they are doing behind our back, if any well-meaning people won the office, they’d do much of the same fundamental damage (unless they vetoed everything, perhaps) because there is no way for Little Villagers to meaningfully assemble, discuss, and consent to such important matters. That would require a lot of structural and sociological changes that will take many years by a tremendous movement that doesn’t exist right now, something someone should return to in a future piece.
[3] https://unetelavillita.wordpress.com/
[4] https://twitter.com/SInquilina/status/1372686376232132608?s=20 Please contact The Blast if the video gets taken down.
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