Hard Labor Made Easy
New Web site documents the history of Chicago’s working class
by C.T. Ballentine
Chicago’s reputation as a hard-working, blue-collar town is impossible to ignore, as cross-generational labor history is integral to the city’s culture. “Chicago is the immigrant industrial city. Working people in Chicago created what became the model of urban industrial life,” says Jeff Helgeson, Labor Trail’s administrative coordinator. “They made a city that worked out of a remarkable diversity of ethnic and racial backgrounds, and their struggles largely created the opportunities, and limits, of life in the city.” The Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies (CCWCS), which already hosts educational panel discussions and historical exhibits, is adding to the documentation of the working-class community by launching Labortrail.org.
The online component of Labor Trail is offered as an expansion to “The Labor Trail: Chicago's History of Working-Class Life and Struggle,” a map of “140 significant locations in the history of labor, migration and working-class culture in Chicago and Illinois.” The map is available through the site for five dollars and for free to educators. The site also invites contributions from its visitors by encouraging them to post additional sites or primary-source material for already-documented locations.
Below are a few of the neighborhoods featured and a small selection of the presented sites. The Near West Side features the location of the Haymarket Riots -- one of the most famous events in both Chicago's and America's labor history (though the map offers very little detail, focusing instead on lesser-known events). Labor Trail itself does not provide live guided tours, but does recommend that anyone interested in them visit the Illinois Labor History Society (kentlaw.edu/ilhs). Whether live or virtual, these tours provide an important, and oft overlooked, view of the Chicago cultural landscape.
Pilsen
The map lists sites from Pilsen’s Bohemian past in the mid-19th century, after a large portion of Chicago’s Czech community were driven from what are now Lincoln Park and the Gold Coast. At 16th and Halsted streets in 1877, a union composed of Czech and other European immigrants battled with a combined force of the Illinois National Guard and Chicago police, resulting in the death of 30 workers. There are also sites from the thriving Mexican community for which the neighborhood is now known, including the Chicago Public Library Branch at 1805 S. Loomis, named for Rudy Lozano, a community activist and organizer assassinated in 1983.
Back of the Yards
Back of the Yards was home to a great number of stock yards in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the poor working conditions of which were dramatized famously in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. The map shows the BO Packing Co., one of the neighborhood’s few remaining packing plants, which can be found near 43rd Street and Loomis Boulevard, as well as the Colombia Hall on 48th and Paulina streets, a community center and tavern where meetings of the Stockyard Labor Council were held.
The Loop
This tour shows the site of the Bread Riots at LaSalle and Kinzie streets, where in 1872 unemployed workers gathered in protest and were beaten by police, as well as Printer’s Row, the six-block chunk where Chicago’s once vibrant publishing trade thrived, now redeveloped for commercial and residential use.
Showing posts with label cover stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cover stories. Show all posts
Chi-Town Sirens: Cover Story for The Machine Newspaper
I know a lot of Chicagoans who like watching girls on roller skates beat the living shit out of each other. Perhaps they thought the oft-recognized Windy City Rollers were the only outlet for their insatiable blood lust. If so, they were dead wrong. Now in their second full season, the Chi-Town Sirens have been jamming through the Chicago area, leaving blood on the tracks and nary a drunken soul unsatisfied.
Recently I attended the “I Pity the Fool!” match, pitting the Ultraviolent against the Wheelers, and featuring a promotional poster with none other than Mr. T himself, a truly suitable image for the decadent hedonism inherent in a sport involving both body checks and mini-skirts. I could imagine no better lead-in to the event than “The Party Bus” hosted by former Siren Diva Copperfield (all the derby girls’ names were plays on words: Robin Zombie, Jane Reaction and, probably the best, Shoka Conduit) bouncing up and down the aisle with green apple flavored vodka, offering bus shots to any and everyone who wanted them. It was every rebellious impulse I’d had as a youngster lived out with no nagging adults to be seen.
“Can I smoke in here?” asked one timid party-busser.
“You can smoke,” Diva replied, “but if it’s green, I want some.”
Diva moved to the sidelines after her first season because she “broke too many bones.” Watching her charge through the bus aisle, sucking down clouds of smoke and shots of vodka, I imagined there were quite a few girls thankful she was no longer charging at them.
Entering the arena with a decent buzz going, the plastic cheese nachos lingering under the heating lamp in the sorry excuse for a concession stand seemed a lot more appetizing than perhaps they ought to have. I snagged them up and took my seat, joining the other fans in yelling and pumping my fist as the girls skated by. What was I cheering for? How did the scoring work? I didn’t know or care. I had a can of Sparks and people were falling down. During intermission some other people played with fire. There was a fight at the end. The whole affair started with an awful version of the national anthem. Where is my trucker hat? I pondered. Can a full on carnival or demolition derby be far off, in this monument to ironic white trashery? My queries were answered with loud cheers, as one of the hated Wheelers took a nasty spill.
The Wheelers were certainly lacking a crowd, or else their fans were the quiet, contemplative sort. In the beginning, it seemed the Ultraviolent and their loyal legions had much to cheer about. They went out to an impressively dominant lead, one they maintained throughout, until the third period when a tie (64-64) was reached.
I had this much figured out: One girl on each team wore a star on their helmet. At the beginning of each jam, the roller derby equivalent of a play, the starred player, the jammer, started from the back of the pack and needed to lap the rest of the crowd. Any subsequent members of the opposing team passed gained their team a point. It seemed easy. But it happened fast. All these skates spinning around a spinning room: It was enough to give me a headache. By the second period I stopped pretending. I watched the action and glanced periodically at the scoreboard, holding my Sparks in the air and yelling like a damn fool.
But still, during the sixty four point tie the tension was tangible. Who would emerge victorious? Would the Ultraviolent maintain their lead? Or would the Wheelers capitalize on their momentum and pull ahead? It was the eternal suspense of sport that transcended, that was applicable in everything from kickboxing to tiddlywinks.
I cheered for the Wheelers because I decided everyone in Ultraviolent was probably really mean. Why else would they be known as Ultraviolent? Nice people do not call themselves such unseemly things.
And the Wheelers, indeed, emerged victorious. Shoka Conduit, it turned out, not only had the cleverest name but was a pretty bad ass jammer to boot and rallied the Wheelers to substantial victory. By the last few minutes the end was a done deal, punches of frustration were thrown and the rink erupted into a full on fight. Everyone cheered.
Through my drunken haze, I found some truth in this, some meaning. Something integral to the very essence of roller derby, something Mr. T might as well have said, and something most of the Chi-Town Sirens’ fans can surely get behind: It’s not whether you win or lose; it’s whether or not you see a fight.
Recently I attended the “I Pity the Fool!” match, pitting the Ultraviolent against the Wheelers, and featuring a promotional poster with none other than Mr. T himself, a truly suitable image for the decadent hedonism inherent in a sport involving both body checks and mini-skirts. I could imagine no better lead-in to the event than “The Party Bus” hosted by former Siren Diva Copperfield (all the derby girls’ names were plays on words: Robin Zombie, Jane Reaction and, probably the best, Shoka Conduit) bouncing up and down the aisle with green apple flavored vodka, offering bus shots to any and everyone who wanted them. It was every rebellious impulse I’d had as a youngster lived out with no nagging adults to be seen.
“Can I smoke in here?” asked one timid party-busser.
“You can smoke,” Diva replied, “but if it’s green, I want some.”
Diva moved to the sidelines after her first season because she “broke too many bones.” Watching her charge through the bus aisle, sucking down clouds of smoke and shots of vodka, I imagined there were quite a few girls thankful she was no longer charging at them.
Entering the arena with a decent buzz going, the plastic cheese nachos lingering under the heating lamp in the sorry excuse for a concession stand seemed a lot more appetizing than perhaps they ought to have. I snagged them up and took my seat, joining the other fans in yelling and pumping my fist as the girls skated by. What was I cheering for? How did the scoring work? I didn’t know or care. I had a can of Sparks and people were falling down. During intermission some other people played with fire. There was a fight at the end. The whole affair started with an awful version of the national anthem. Where is my trucker hat? I pondered. Can a full on carnival or demolition derby be far off, in this monument to ironic white trashery? My queries were answered with loud cheers, as one of the hated Wheelers took a nasty spill.
The Wheelers were certainly lacking a crowd, or else their fans were the quiet, contemplative sort. In the beginning, it seemed the Ultraviolent and their loyal legions had much to cheer about. They went out to an impressively dominant lead, one they maintained throughout, until the third period when a tie (64-64) was reached.
I had this much figured out: One girl on each team wore a star on their helmet. At the beginning of each jam, the roller derby equivalent of a play, the starred player, the jammer, started from the back of the pack and needed to lap the rest of the crowd. Any subsequent members of the opposing team passed gained their team a point. It seemed easy. But it happened fast. All these skates spinning around a spinning room: It was enough to give me a headache. By the second period I stopped pretending. I watched the action and glanced periodically at the scoreboard, holding my Sparks in the air and yelling like a damn fool.
But still, during the sixty four point tie the tension was tangible. Who would emerge victorious? Would the Ultraviolent maintain their lead? Or would the Wheelers capitalize on their momentum and pull ahead? It was the eternal suspense of sport that transcended, that was applicable in everything from kickboxing to tiddlywinks.
I cheered for the Wheelers because I decided everyone in Ultraviolent was probably really mean. Why else would they be known as Ultraviolent? Nice people do not call themselves such unseemly things.
And the Wheelers, indeed, emerged victorious. Shoka Conduit, it turned out, not only had the cleverest name but was a pretty bad ass jammer to boot and rallied the Wheelers to substantial victory. By the last few minutes the end was a done deal, punches of frustration were thrown and the rink erupted into a full on fight. Everyone cheered.
Through my drunken haze, I found some truth in this, some meaning. Something integral to the very essence of roller derby, something Mr. T might as well have said, and something most of the Chi-Town Sirens’ fans can surely get behind: It’s not whether you win or lose; it’s whether or not you see a fight.
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