Dear 24th District Council Member Veronica Arreola, Mayor Brandon Johnson, Alderwoman Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth, State Senator Mike Simmons, Police Superintendent Larry Snelling, Deputy Mayor for Community Safety Garien Gatewood, Deputy Mayor for Education Jen Johnson, Officer Bob Vanna of the 24th District, CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova, and Senn High School Principal Holly Dacres,
“We are each other’s harvest. We are each other’s business. We are each other’s magnitude and bond.” -Previous IL Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks
Now it seems that the city needs officers to give tickets in order to raise money for the municipality and keep the system going: it’s too expensive to jail people, admitting errors is embarrassing, the whole s ituation is problematic! Moving to a safer neighborhood and taking the responsibility of avoiding crime is not the same as walking down your street fear-free in this great city of ours, or anywhere else in our great nation or world. That’s a symptom of the immaturity of the planet; but it doesn’t mean that we can’t do something about it in our city.
Education about our global neighbors—and talk therapy for myself— helped me recover from parenting mistakes and national trauma, and has suggested to me ways of combatting our international juvenility.
The magazine Blueprint for a Greener World is meant to inspire and fuel, as well as convey my understanding of hope for the future. To improve the world’s current psychological plight, in a nutshell—while we learn to be friendlier to each other, employing Native American words and integrating other cultural treasures initiating oversees, we are learning to enjoy life, using our virtues. We will be looking up and out and around to see other ways to be creative rather than only raising families. Using drums and our hand/footprints, let’s reprogram our bodies to ascend, expressing ourselves and welcoming the youth with healthful rhythms.
The cartoon featured on the eighth page of my magazine is by Herb Block, who went to Senn High School! My grandmother inspired the image when she stood up for the value of the United Nations at a Daughters of the American Revolution conference in 1953. Edgewater’s and Andersonville’s diverse and enlightened populations will find the cartoon funny, but tragic, because it accurately depicts many people’s foolish attitude about our country and world.
I have written prose and poetry and expressed my struggle with a troubled human environment. I see that Are we strong enough to get creative? is the question for all of us, now.
We humans want to make the point that, right now, living hurts! It hurts in many ways. Documenting these conditions and incidents is the first step towards healing. But sharing news of peace should be the second.
Noise in IL?
Pollution? Not sound.
We want a state of music, not sounds of pollution—nor sound pollution—in our homeland.
We can capitalize spiritually on our history here:
See our folks frolicking together, not just drinking beer.
Artisanal outlook: ebony and ivory
Playing, taking turns, no rich-folks-wanna-be,
But wealthy and healthy in heart, strong again in soul:
We excel in being ourselves—from jazz to rock and roll!
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Especially for CPS:
I like the idea of teaching cursive writing in schools, using the help and examples of older people and their scripts.
Another idea for students is a video documentation project, the Library of HumanKind—or, HueminKind—which could be like StoryCorps, the Library of Congress-stored conversation effort.
Especially for the CPD:
Training in zen thinking and acting. I would also use the fight/dancing Brazilian martial art capoeira (it involves a lot of evasive moves like cartwheels; the two players fight in a ring of people, and I think sing a song: “Comrade…”)
The situation that generated Black Lives Matter! inspired my idea of Good Neighbor Training/Community Ties : a program that would be available to see on TV. It would be required for all Chicago employees, who would be televised while participating in it, and it would be an education in living in urbanity, for us city residents, dwelling side by side. Yes, we could start global healing right here! .
The plethora of negative police incidents in this country in the last few years make me think that the script police officers use to interact with apprehendees could be improved. In one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, he discusses a Korean airplane that went down. The co-pilot couldn’t tell the head pilot that he’d noticed something that was wrong, because politeness rules of their culture didn’t allow that! Instead of saving their own lives and those of their passengers, the Korean pilots crashed the plane! Subsequently, the language of pilots was changed to English. I suspect something similar is going on here, with police procedure. I am not a psychologist, but maybe the CPD should hire one, or an anthropologist, to rewrite the process of interacting with citizens.
My partner tells me that some other countries (Germany; Iran) do not publish the names of criminals.
It saddens me that we often think of “justice” as right punishment. It’s so easy, when considering crime incidents, to want revenge. But real justice means
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safety, and no assault occurring in the first place! We need to train for a peaceful world.
Especially for the CTA:
I feel that the “Red Line” is problematic, and I have a few suggestions to change it up: firstly, call it another color—Tan Line or Silver Line. Red reminds one of danger and blood. Even Maroon would be better, I think. Or Grey.
Secondly, I volunteer to be the overdue-for-a-change announcer for the CTA.
Let riders decorate stations/railcars/buses with their hand/footprints! This would create customer commitment to the routes and something to look at while riding; putting them on the ceilings would encourage riders to relax in the stressful confinement that public transport cannot help but be.
That is why roaming officers are so important—we really do value each other’s lives and wellbeing…Maybe we do need an officer on every platform.
My biggest suggestion for CTA is to remodel the railcars and buses with better seating, including that for drivers. Why not look around at transport seating in other countries? The reason I don’t like it now is that it makes the sitter slump, which is uncomfortable and not healthy. I would choose seating that is flat or slightly tilted downward (to the front, not back), so bodies could be supported in getting up when they need to. Tilted seats would help the sitter shift their weight into their legs in preparation for ascending, instead of being a lump; the seats you have now thrust people’s weight back, as if you are fearful that they might fall out of the chair! (This is a common design mistake, and I am sorry that drivers, and most of us people, suffer from poorly-designed chairs, too—including toilets!)
I remember the Guardian Angels—do you? They were volunteers who dressed in red and went through train cars, guiding riders with their presence to remain lucid and stay friendly. Think of cultural presences on vehicles as a good thing; entertainment might prevent violence.
Now they’d be arrested for going through cars, so you’d have to change that stupid rule; preventing riders from walking from one car into another means we can’t MOVE
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much: you want us to instead sit in the seats that makes us slump? No thanks! That’s a breeding ground for expressing our frustration with being caged.
Finally, your riders—Chicagoans, tourists, and others—should be treated with more respect. They deserve to use the bathroom and change their children. You know how you were forced to put in elevators for handicapped folks? Well, how about bathrooms for each station—with attendants, giving out Kleenex, menstruation supplies, diapers—for males and females and they/them? When we start treating ourselves like humans, shooting each other like animals will probably lessen, too.
“…We hail what heals and sponsors and restores.” -Gwendolyn Brooks, “Art.”
~C. Jenny Walbridge
February 13, 2024
Chicago, IL
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