Field+Work+Day+-+October+22+-+SSDP

Today we took a condensed version of the "Ghetto Tour" -- sponsored by [|We the People Media], the tour consists of a bus tour of the parts of the Chicago Housing Authority, conducted by former residents of the [|CHA]. Our guides -- Beauty Turner (writer for //The Residents Journal//) and Ron Carter (former [|Black Panther] and publisher of //[|The South Street Journal)]// -- responded to our requests to incorporate into the tour their sense of how drug policies had affected CHA residents over the years. We learned of a number of connections, including:
 * the CHA pays $16 million to the Chicago Police Department for "extra protection"
 * residents 18 and over are subjected to urine tests and can be evicted if relatives of residents have drug convictions
 * the presence of high crime in such locations as the Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens, the Ickes Homes (sp?), etc., often meant the infiltration of drug crime
 * drugs became the economy of the communities in the absence of real economic opportunity (i.e., jobs) or commercial development
 * Ron Carter made reference to the efforts of the FBI to bring down the Black Panthers and other political movements by introducing drugs into poor black communities (paraphrasing //[|The Godfather]:// "Sell your drugs to spics and niggers, but not my people")
 * heavy law enforcement presence in the CHA, including numerous arrests for trespassing for people visiting relatives, sometimes even residents themselves
 * the fact that CHA residents are ordinary people living their lives -- there are some drugs there, but not just there. "There are drugs in your communities too!"

Meeting Canary, one the residents of Dearborn Homes: Ron Carter and Beauty Turner:



Kaplan teaching //The Scarlet Letter// on the steps before the tour Beauty address the students: