| Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| The Neighborhood is Going to Hell!; And it's the Yuppies' fault! | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 12 2006, 07:22 PM (99 Views) | |
| George K | Jun 12 2006, 07:22 PM Post #1 |
|
Finally
|
Edgy about `yuppies' Activists work to preserve a Puerto Rican enclave in Humboldt Park as new residents move in By Antonio Olivo Tribune staff reporter June 12, 2006 Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park see their community's weakening hold on the area through the prism of neighborhood violence 40 years ago this week. The shooting by Chicago police of a local teenager sparked two days of rioting June 12 and June 13, 1966, on Division Street that sprang from deep frustrations over bad police relations, poor schools and uncaring landlords. But the disturbance also inspired decades of building that, while other Puerto Rican neighborhoods disappeared, anchored the community's identity on Division Street in the form of two 50-ton steel sculptures of the Puerto Rican flag between Western and California Avenues. Yet as local leaders prepare for a weeklong commemoration of the Division Street riots, rising real estate prices in recent years have been displacing the community. A push by area activists to keep Humboldt Park Puerto Rican is brewing a new, subtler form of ethnic tension. It can be seen in a "No Yuppies" sign on a Division Street storefront window near freshly rehabbed condominium buildings. It can be heard in the racially tinged remarks tossed at white professionals and artists whose numbers in the area have jumped by a third since 1990 to nearly 37,000. The Puerto Rican population has decreased by a third to slightly more than 26,000 during the same period. Chris Furman, who has enjoyed the local culture since moving there in 1998, said he has been accused of "taking over" the neighborhood. "It makes you uncomfortable," Furman said. "I try to tell them that before Puerto Ricans were here, there were European Jews. And before the Jews, the Polish community was here. Neighborhoods change." A group called The Puerto Rican Agenda heads an effort to harness that change. Against a community history of being displaced from Lincoln Park and other Chicago neighborhoods, the group of about 40 business owners and other leaders seeks to keep working class Puerto Ricans from leaving Humboldt Park while luring back families. Along those lines, several affordable housing projects are under way while neighborhood "ambassadors" sell Puerto Rican professionals on Humboldt Park, pointing out the many new condominiums. "I tell them about how close we are to downtown and about everything that's going on here and then I ask: `So, what you gonna do?'" said Alberto Vazquez, owner of a local hair salon and one such ambassador. Among the group's greatest worries is to see Division Street's "Paseo Boricua" commercial strip go the way of Greektown or Little Italy, two cultural islands of restaurants and shops on the city's Near West Side that no longer serve neighborhoods filled with Greek-Americans or Italian-Americans. "It's taken 40 years for us to establish where we are today," said Enrique Salgado, who heads the local Chamber of Commerce. "Once this is gone, you lose the concentration of the Puerto Rican community in Illinois." That community, estimated at 151,000, arrived in the Chicago area during the mid-20th Century. Working in steel mills and factories, Puerto Ricans initially settled in several ethnic pockets in the city. By the mid-1960s, rising housing prices had forced most Puerto Ricans to move toward Humboldt Park, said Jose Lopez, executive director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Institute. At the time of the riots, feelings of racial discrimination ran deep, Lopez said. The riots were "a time of great awakening," said Lopez, who was 17 when he witnessed the looting and shooting that wounded dozens. "Out of the ashes, there seemed to be a rebirth among Puerto Ricans where they took greater responsibility for the community." That those efforts have supported a rising real estate market now displacing Puerto Ricans is a bitter pill to swallow, Lopez said. Yet he and others are careful to say that they don't want to keep out non-Puerto Ricans. Instead, they ask newcomers to embrace the neighborhood's cultural identity. Others, nonetheless, believe there is an isolating strategy at work. Several area developers complained of seeing projects derailed in favor of others that were anchored by a Puerto Rican cultural component. Developer Anthony Zaskowski said he felt pressured to give in to community protests over a project to build condominiums near North and Artesian Avenues that would have blocked a mural featuring Pedro Albizu Campos, a hero in Puerto Rican history. After a land swap with Zaskowski in 2004, the lot is now a small urban park. "We were forced to settle this thing," Zaskowski said. "We lost a lot of money." Ald. Billy Ocasio (26th) said he is fulfilling residents' wishes "for the culture to remain alive." Citing a ward policy that forces developers to set aside a third of their projects for affordable housing, Ocasio said, "If you take a look at what's happening, you have a plan that is able to allow people who want to stay, to stay." That message rings loudest on Division Street. A low-income apartment building for seniors, designed in the colorful Spanish colonial style of Puerto Rico's historic Old San Juan neighborhood, recently opened near several new restaurants. On the other end of the strip, another housing development for working-class families is under construction. Inside the Batey Urbano youth group, where the "No Yuppies" sign is posted, students and young adults perform spoken-word poetry that mourns the passing of neighborhood characters. The emotions that the ongoing displacement has stirred in the neighborhood sometimes lead to verbal confrontations with newcomers, some said. "It's something we talk about a lot," said Judith Diaz, 24, one of the group's members. "How do you deal with a yuppie? How do you talk to a yuppie if they don't want to talk to you?" |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| jon-nyc | Jun 13 2006, 12:25 AM Post #2 |
|
Cheers
|
Puerto Rican????? Humboldt Park used to be Ukranian! What happened to the Ukranian Village? |
| In my defense, I was left unsupervised. | |
![]() |
|
| Axtremus | Jun 13 2006, 02:26 AM Post #3 |
|
HOLY CARP!!!
|
What a bunch of racists!
|
![]() |
|
| Matt G. | Jun 13 2006, 02:41 AM Post #4 |
|
Middle Aged Carp
|
Dude, that's just bad geography. :wacko: Ukrainian Village still exists, but is much further south. Humboldt Park has been a primarily Puerto Rican enclave as long as I can remember. |
![]() |
|
| George K | Jun 13 2006, 03:00 AM Post #5 |
|
Finally
|
Ax, you got the point. Jump into your time machine and substitute "Negro" for "Yuppie," and "White" for "Puerto-Rican" and read the article again. Would anyone considert that racist? |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic » |







10:40 PM Jul 12