Through donations of time and labor from LOT with additional support and materials from CANA, This team of truly stellar young people are living up to their organization’s name (Leaders of Tomorrow)  today.

Our community thanks you for your support!

This year we cleaned streets, dug up weeds from corners in preparation for our May 19th award winning flower planting effort. Another rewarding effort was planting flowers in barrels at the corner of Madison and Mason, where we have problems with loitering, partying and drug activity. We hope this experiment will brighten up this area and through beautification, make this area less attractive to those engaging in illegal activity.  The barrel planting also involved children that live on that block. They came out to join the other families in planting and watering the flowers.

The families with children were wonderful as lessons in gardening and service were delivered through actual experience.

We appreciate very much this effort which helps to lead by example and promotes erasing the invisible barrier between Oak Park and the Austin community just over Austin Blvd.  This magic street artificially separates people, businesses, safety and  economics.

The 16 blocks that CANA focuses on extends from Madison to Corcoran and Austin to Menard streets.

(Stats from The Policy Map and Census)

• Our 16 blocks are home to 2,787 people.
• 1.33% White
• 92.64 % African American
• 6 % Other races
• 45% earn < $25,000
• 80 % earn <$50,00

Of the 628 Families Identified:

• 16% are married with children
• 23% single with children
• 1,778 people of working age
• 1,053 employed
• Potential unemployment of around 40%

In the spirit of “tikkun olam” thanks for helping us build and heal our community

We also want to thank the tireless efforts of Roman Morrow who arranged for and supervised the men of the Safer Foundation. 

Katie and the Duke Engage Crew were wonderful as they completed their second year with us. We could not have completed our award winning corner planting last year without them. We really enjoyed the Duke Engage practice of Reflection on service that was held in the Third Church sanctuary with support from Pastor Covell, Board President Allen Matthews,  Mena Boulanger, and our dear friend Jerry Parker to name a few.   The Christ the King High School  students participated in the Reflection period as  they prepare for college life and hopefully service as well.

A shout out to Smitty who lead a team of people and Bea who traveled around to several teams delivering water as needed.  Marvin, Joe and I also lead teams that made short work of our 16 blocks by picking up litter, cleaning alleys and vacant lots to removing weeds from the corners in preparation for the May 19th planting event.

This cleaning event happened to occur on the City’s Clean and Green day. We thank  Kyle Smith, our ward superintendent in charge of Streets and Sanitation for continuing support and loaner tools and bags.

A special thanks to all those not mentioned  by name. You are all examples of what having a better nature means.

We listened as Ms Brown described her mother as the Angel of the family and how disturbing the idea that she could have been lost that night. There was at least one other car with bullet damage and who knows where all the other shots finally landed.  We all talked and talked and slowly felt a little better. All of us however were keenly aware that next time we may not be so lucky. Why that corner Madison and Mason is allowed to fester unchecked has become a failure indicative of forgotten neighborhoods, throw away people, political incompetence and institutional racism that permeates our local government. Preventative policing is a foreign term  and broken windows theory is given lip service only. The official line from the city and police department is that they have enough resources and deploy them fairly; we feel differently and the data backs us up prompting action from us and the ACLU.   Expenditures in hosting NATO and support for safety and security in other countries seem more important than our neighborhood here in Chicago.   Even a simple no-parking sign to limit activity at that corner has been turned into a power struggle with potential life and death consequences.  Accountability means bullshit in Austin.

YOU CAN BE PART OF AN AWARD WINNING TEAM.

 Come and participate in something beautiful.

This coming Saturday, May 5^th, we will welcome the Christ the King High School faculty, parents and student volunteers. They will help us with cleaning and additional corner preparation work.

On Saturday, May 19^th, we will plant the flowers on the 22 corners throughout the CANA neighborhood. We would like to assign teams to each intersection or corner to complete the work.

There are many ways that you can help:

Labor

• Come out and help to plant flowers or prepare the corners for planting. Bring your gloves.

Tools

• We need additional shovels and hand tools on May 19^th.You can come out and lend your tools to the effort.

Plants

• We need perennials and annual plants. Get them to us by May 12^th so that we can determine our inventory and allocate to each corner as necessary.

You can just show up on May 19^st at 9:00am at 301 N. Mayfield. We will start there and then take materials and teams to each corner. At noon we’ll meet together to celebrate.

We hope to see you there !

Volunteers will meet at 9 a.m. at 301 N. Mayfield, and we will break into groups and decide who goes where.  If you are not able to meet at 9 or help with more than your block, watch for the crew to arrive at your block and consider coming out to work with us. 

CANA will provide lunch afterwards at 301 N. Mayfield (the Unitarian Church). CANA’s cleanup will be part of Chicago’s April 21 Citywide Clean & Green Day. So come on CANA—yes we cana help bring more beauty to the streets!  For more info about CANA’s cleanup, call 312-952-4983 or go to website www.cana16.com.  For more info about Clean & Green Day sites beyond CANA’s blocks, call 3-1-1. You can even suggest a new cleanup site before April 13.

There is one sign, less than 2 ft. by 2 ft. that could encourage people to make a choice and take action 24 hours a day, all year long. The sign, which can be provided by the city, could say that it is unlawful to park on a residential street, bordering a commercial zone, for more than 30 minutes after business hours.

The police officers informally surveyed about this type of simple small sign say this is a useful tool in helping to maintain order and a decent quality of life for residents. When residents call 911 at 1:00 AM about the cars parked on the corner, selling alcohol out of their trunks, completing drug transactions, participating in prostitution, the police can clear the area with a simple parking ticket. There is no legitimate business transaction taking place at one o’clock in the morning.

We see small signs of this type as having the potential to make a clear, positive, measurable impact on the quality of life in our neighborhoods. However after the 29^th ward alderman:

• Received on May 11, 2011 a letter from a business owner expressing his support of the concept of the small sign
• Received on July 26, 2011 signed petitions from 57 registered voting residents asking for a sign on one corner, the corner of Madison and Mason
• Received on August 15, 2011  a letter asking for a status or a response on the request for a single sign on one corner, the corner of Madison and Mason

As of March 4, 2012, we still don’t see the small sign on the corner of Madison and Mason.

It can’t be that the cost of the sign is a problem. The 29^th ward alderman, from the $1.3 million designated for improvements in the 29^th ward, under the alderman’s discretion, sent back unspent to the city over $163,000, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune . The cost of the sign could certainly have been covered by that much money.

Come join us in:

• bringing out the beauty in our neighborhood,
• creating a neighborhood of peace with a greater sense of safety,
• making a positive contribution to the revitalization of our community

WHAT WE BELIEVE DETERMINES HOW WE BEHAVE.

6:30pm to 8:00pm

Third Unitarian Church

301 N. Mayfield

Come to plan events in your neighborhood!

Festival        Flower Planting     Health Fair       Street Cleaning     

Come participate in deciding what activities take place in your neighborhood this year.

 Planning meeting at

 6:30PM

Tomorrow

Tuesday

February 7, 2012

 301 N. Mayfield

 Because we joined together and worked on common goals, we were able to make significant, positive changes in our neighborhood last year. We want to build on our accomplishments and momentum to continue to move ourselves and our community forward.

 At that meeting we will develop our specific activities for 2012, identify required resources and neighborhood assets, and create the calendar for the execution of those activities.

Tentative Schedule

April 21      Spring Cleaning

May 19        Corner and Garden Planting

July 14         Street Cleaning for Festival

July 21         Community Festival and Health Fair

September 15        Fall Cleaning