GreenStar Workers Seek to Unionize with Workers United

Ithaca Times, August 8, 2024

Workers at the GreenStar Food Co-op in Ithaca are pushing for unionization, citing a need for improved workplace democracy and better working conditions. Despite a majority of workers expressing support for unionizing with Workers United, management has opted to hold an election rather than voluntarily recognizing the union.

 

“It was a disappointment for management not to recognize us voluntarily because we did have a majority of workers on cards,” GreenStar employee  Maxwell Bollman said during a recent press conference. “The election process will be democratic, and we’re excited that workers here will be able to exercise that right.”

 

Bollman said that workers have requested that management sign fair election principles, ensuring equal time for workers and management to discuss the organizing drive. “We’re hoping they sign those because we hope they respect our right to organize,” Bollman added.

 

In response to questions regarding why management decided against voluntarily recognizing the union, General Manager Jess Bessemer told the Ithaca Times, “Like Ithaca, GreenStar has many passionate staff who have a broad diversity of opinions about this topic.  As a democratic organization and having listened to many staff, it is important to our team that everyone has a chance to have their voice heard through an election.”

 

Bessemer continued saying, “GreenStar supports all workers right to unionize and create better jobs in their community. We congratulate the group of staff who are seeking to form a union at GreenStar for the work they've put in and their contributions to  making the Co-op a great place to work.”

 

According to Bessemer, “Over the past two years we have increased our entry wage from $15.38 to $17.62 and offer great benefits like 2-5+ weeks of paid time off per year plus 5 floating and 2 regular holidays, 80% paid health insurance, vision, dental, staff discount, and more.” He added, “The Co-op has long been a values-driven community institution and no matter the results of the vote we will continue to make the Co-op a great place to work.”

 

David Meyers, a GreenStar employee, emphasized the need for workplace democracy. “Workplace democracy is my focus. I think it's important to have a voice and be heard, but I think it's also important that we take part in the decisions about the work we're doing.”

 

Front-end worker Nico Lewis expressed frustration with management’s handling of issues and the lack of support for diverse employees. “They’re not taking care of their more diverse employees and not listening to us when we have problems. We all just really want to start being heard,” Lewis said.

 

Jessica Marks highlighted the contradiction between GreenStar’s democratic principles and its daily operations. “There’s a lot of talk about being democratic in the co-op, but in the day-to-day operations, different departments are not being run democratically,” she said. “Management is very adamant that they are in charge and don’t want the daily workflow directed by people who actually do that work.”

GreenStar Food Co-Op employees held a press conference on August 8 to discuss their ongoing effots to unionize with Workers United, seeking improved workplace democracy and better working conditions. (Left to Right: Alicia Richard, Jessica Marks, Joe Damiano, Nico Lewis, Aaron Spayth, David Meyers, Maxwell Bollman)

Matt Dougherty

GreenStar is a consumer cooperative, meaning it is owned by its customers rather than its workers. In contrast, a worker cooperative is owned and democratically controlled by its employees. “In a consumer co-op, the workers do not necessarily have any privileged or democratic voice in decision-making whatsoever, other than being one of 14,000 members,” Meyers explained. “Unionizing is a way for us to seek a democratic voice for workers inside a consumer co-op.”

 

The workers are now pushing for an election to formalize the union, aiming to hold it within a few weeks. “We sent an email saying that [we wanted to hold an election] within two weeks, but I have no idea,” Lewis said. Meyers added, “The letter to management stated it’d be great to have this in two weeks, but the NLRB process might extend it to four weeks.”

 

Management will be required to recognize the union if the vote to unionize succeeds.

 

The employees believe that unionizing will benefit their working conditions and enhance the shopping experience for customers. “It will be a better experience for our customers to come in and have a better experience with us,” Lewis said. “I hear the same complaints from hundreds of people every day: the lines are too long, there’s nothing on the shelves. I want a better shopping experience for our customers to make my job a better experience.”

 

Meyers emphasized that the union effort is part of a broader push for community improvement. “In addition to doing this for ourselves, we see ourselves potentially inspiring other places. If they see somebody unionizing here, they might think, ‘Well, we can do it too,’” Meyers said. “We’re aiming for a more coherent and supportive community.”

 

The union’s demands focus on giving workers a real voice in their workplace. “Organizing in the grocery industry is like having a bunch of little workplaces collaborating, and so the issues are diverse and vary from department to department,” Bollman explained. “Overall, we’re organizing so that workers can voice their grievances and collaborate on best practices. It’s about workplace democracy and being able to participate in decisions affecting us.”

 

GreenStar employee Aaron Spayth emphasized the importance of being heard without fear of retribution. “In many workplaces, it’s hard to voice grievances and have them heard and dealt with. That’s not something we’ve been short of at GreenStar, and having the voice to go to management without fear of being brushed off or gaslit is crucial,” Spayth said. “Empowering us to feel comfortable and safe to voice our concerns makes a huge difference.”

 

Cafe Chicago Hits the Ground Running, Stumbling, and Flying. All at the Same Time.

Cafe Chicago has hit the ground, running, stumbling, and flying. All at the same time.

First, the ground. We are creating a reality where the immigrant day laborers who are involved in Cafe Chicago can one day take it on fully, themselves, with the proper training. Personally, I did not know how much work this would be, but we are all committed to the idea, and the transfer is taking huge amounts of energy and time. That said, our cooperative members are taking on responsibilities as they can, and though it would have been easier to start a fair trade organic coffee company that funds social change and run by experienced outsiders, we really are maintaining a vision that we believe will prove to be where the deeper transformation happens, economic, social, and really, spiritual. Putting the workers in the drivers' seat.

We've had events at the Workers Center where 75 people showed up from all round Chicago, eager to learn about our work, wanting to take the ideas back to their communities, listening and singing along with the singer songwriters we've brought in to document our work in musical form. And it is here that we now realize, we've sparked a bona fide grassroots movement. From below. Pretty intense.

The cooperative has four regular members, and a dozen other day laborers involved in various ways, less regularly.

We've gotten huge name recognition in Chicago, while selling maybe 80-100 lbs of coffee per week (tiny!). We are working out so many glitches that come up with our language barriers, people's previous lack of experience of taking responsibility and ownership, lack of experience with business ....

But we seem to hit on the right methods slowly, and are good at bringing in outside support (for example, our college professor friend who is working on our Business Plan with us, has provided an amazing clarifying and focusing of our mission and our business). So, hitting the ground's proven to have quite a few stumbles, but we are learning to walk.

It helps to have a damn good rich and chocolatey coffee, from La FEM in the highlands of Nicaragua. At La FEM, the women who participate in the cooperative not only grow these magical beans but teach and learn construction and other building skills essential to further survival and thriving.

Our name recognition is coming through word of mouth; and a lot of writing skills put to good use in social media; the sway of the Latino Union and of the Chicago Coffee Confederation in different and complementary arenas; it's a real nice mish mash.

We have very good networks with almost all segments of Chicago's arts, radical, immigrant, worker, and progressive communities and our organizations. Our media work has exceeded all expectations, and is where we are flying: an article in internationally-read Latin American Herald Tribune; ChicagoUnionNews.com did a piece that put us in front of Chicago's unions (and national ones as well); and a piece on ABC7 News during primetime, probably the biggest visual media in Chicago, where we performed quite quite well. The New York Times will be around soon, it's the first media avenue I've begun to actively pursue.

All that said, we are now aware that we are not only a part of a large-scale economic seachange, but a leading voice. A tugboat. And we are keeping in mind, because we've sparked so many imaginations and tapped into a model of grasping and taking the reins of self-determination, that we can assist others in creating similar endeavors. Whether in coffee or other essentials. We hope to work with some of the other organizations in the National Day Labor Organizing Network, to establish ten more Cafe ______'s in different cities, by the end of 2013. They've been calling us, watching us, supporting us.

Locally, we've identified other niches where projects like worker-owned Cafe Chicago would have wide open space for success (such as a fair trade organic tortilleria), and rather than thinking we can do this too, will start working with others so that they can begin the process. Expanding horizontally, as the Chicago Coffee Confederation has, rather than vertically.

There's a lot more that could be said, but I wanted to let you know where we're at, and again thank you for your support, that support has proven to be vital to our sense that yes, we can do this, and others think so too.

So Thanks! And happy holidays to you ...

David

Cafe YO! - Made by Artists: Made by Youth: Making Community and a New Economy.

It started seven years ago.

Loss of employment led a guy to start roasting 100% fair trade organic green coffee beans in a friend's garage. Then selling it, bartering it, trading it for sandwiches and shoes and shelter, making a living while also raising funds for social change efforts ranging from the Chicago Women’s Health Center to Radios Populares to the Latino Union to West Town Bikes.
This endeavor became known as Resistance Coffee, and maybe you’ve seen it on the shelf at Newleaf Natural Grocery in Rogers Park.
Over two years ago, this quirky success morphed – not by growing into a larger, vertical, vertigo-producing corporation, mind you, but horizontally.
Two other fellas took up the original model, roasting on homemade equipment (BBQ grills! Propane! Dilapidated Garages! A field in Michigan!) with little or no investment, and now have parallel micro-endeavors, Grinderman Coffee (grindermancoffee.com), and Miscellaneous Treats. This trio call themselves the Chicago Coffee Confederation. This trio have gone on to bring in serious creative energy, artists of all kinds to assist with graphics, writing, artwork, web design, and even music related to social change and … coffee.
Last year, two of these roasters, David Meyers of Resistance Coffee and Michael McSherry of Grinderman, started working closely with the Latino Union in the creation of a larger project, called Café Chicago (CafeChicago.org). Café Chicago has grown into the city’s first immigrant-run worker-owned cooperative coffee roaster, toasting up fair trade organic beans grown by the women of La FEM cooperative, funding the immigrant rights work of the Latino Union (latinounion.org). Day laborers who've stood on corners braving bitter cold and extreme heat and boredom waiting for jobs to turn up, are now taking on all aspects of a coffee-roasting business. Not for profit, but for people and community.
Now the gang are up to something yet again.
The next phase of this movement, which is largely about growing community, economic justice, and the leveraging of resources and talents for people and the environment not profit, is youth-focused.
It’s a coffee venture.
It's Café YO!.

Café YO! Youth Organizing, Youth Occupying. The economy and the community.
The idea taking shape is the creation of a city-wide, youth-oriented coffee company. Fair trade? Check. Organic? Of course. Workers make the decisions? Mais oui. The workers and the creators this time - with the generous support and talents of a burgeoning group of adult artists, writers, musicians, activists, organizers who meet weekly at the Hideout's fantastic Bread and Soup gatherings – are youth. From across the city, we are coming together to not only roast, package, sell, and distribute this amazing coffee, but also to travel to countries of origin to establish relationships with coffee growers from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, and African countries.
Café YO! is also developing a citywide band of youth and adult musicians – bringing economics and creativity together in new ways. Another piece of the puzzle. Probably another story.
Café YO! is now making connections with teens around the city on street corners and through rad schools, and developing fundraising materials – a public relations packet, if you will. Funding will be forthcoming from various unions in Chicago and across the country, as well as from generous individuals of all stripes.
Consider supporting Cafe YO!. Your first reward? Making possible the very first stage of the very first youth-run, community-based fair trade organic coffee company in the country. In the world.
Your second reward? One day soon, drinking the coffee they bring.

Café Chicago: A New Model of Social Action in the City that Caffeinates

The economic, social, and environmental collapse that we swim in may be happening so slowly that we are not able to detect its downward spiral in our day-to-day lives. But it is taking place, and we need to evolve much more quickly than we have been. We need bolder action. We need to spawn viable alternatives while also actively resisting the corporate and state forces out to repress, distress, and brutalize us as they protect wealth and privilege.

That paragraph's perhaps an odd way to start a brief description of the new activities being launched by Resistance Coffee and its umbrella Chicago Coffee Confederation, but it does provide some insight into the motivations behind such projects as Café Chicago.

Café Chicago seeks to address real and growing failures within our warfare-oriented, corporate-dominated, ethically challenged society. Decisions in the work place are made by a class of owners and managers not doing that actual work. Immigrants are exploited by our economic and business models, then targeted for repression and deportation when nativists get restless. Jobs are often meaningless and often put workers into the unfortunate role of constructing their own demise (example, day laborers and other workers in low-income areas building and renovating the buildings that will be condos that will make the area unlivable for those workers all too soon).

Too often we are forced into compromising our values, because we can't afford to maintain our values. If we are lucky, we buy shitty pesticide-laden produce because organic is too expensive; if we live in the vast food deserts of the South and West Sides, pork rinds and synthesized cupcakes are our side dishes. We drive and drive and drive because it is in someone's interest to block construction of affordable and effective public transportation. We buy coffee grown under old-style plantation-like conditions, sold to us by baristas who hate their jobs but need to make a living.

It’s time for a different model, one that values human beings and our longing for freedom and for justice and community. We need alternatives that don’t find us hiding our heads in the sand, but that continue to challenge those forces hell-bent on destroying our city, our planet, and our lives. It's time for a different model of making a living, of funding social change whether radical or revolutionary or alternative-building. It’s time for new models of social interaction that prize each and every voice, and that build community and resistance.

Café Chicago grows out of this search for real alternatives, and out of the experience of a small-batch coffee roaster toiling in a freezing cold garage trying to make a living roasting fair trade, organic, liberation-oriented coffee over the past five years on a backyard barbeque grill while raising much-needed funds for feminist, immigrant, and other radical organizations. Café Chicago grows out of the recently formed Chicago Coffee Confederation, which now has three homemade micro-roasters spinning in three different garages, with several more in the works. We are working together to support ourselves, our communities, our organizations and creative work, and of course to support the very real desire for great tasting, consumer-fetish-free coffee. It grows out of a desire to create meaningful, living wage, socially relevant work in an atmosphere free of ugly power relations.

The first small-batch, homemade coffee roaster.

The idea that is forming is to take the expertise of the garage roasters of the Chicago Coffee Confederation and expand our work horizontally and on a much larger scale via a working relationship with a vital social change organization in Chicago. We will be working with a prominent group working with day laborers and immigrant communities to construct a worker-made, worker-owned, and worker-operated cooperative that will roast coffee in full-sized, energy-efficient machinery.Money generated by Café Chicago will be used to support the workers doing the work, and to support the work of the organization. An attached cafe will serve as a gathering place for people who value such work, people doing that work, and for people who share values of cooperation and mutual aid and want to act in solidarity with those at the bottom. This hub, Café Chicago, will also benefit the work of many other change organizations in Chicago, generating funds for these organizations and also serving to generate funds for projects that get sidelined in the process of seeking restrictive corporate and governmental funding.

Using some features of communal bike shops like Working Bikes and Ciclo Urbano, our hub will open its doors and its expertise to youth seeking out meaningful work and experience and knowledge of the world, to low-income activists and artists needing to augment their incomes, and to others interested in the art and craft of socially-relevant coffee roasting.

Café Chicago’s gonna rock this city that works, but we’re going to work it a different way. If you wanna participate, write and let us know who what when where and how, and probably especially why.

The revolution may not be well-funded (yet); the revolution will be caffeinated.

Coffee bean porn.

A Call for Dignity: Day Laborers Strike on May Day

 

A Call for Dignity:

Day Laborers Strike on May Day

On May 1, 1886, anarchists, socialists, and rank-and-file workers went on strike in Chicago, raising the stakes in a campaign that joined immigrant and native-born workers in common cause against the factory owners and bosses. The strike, which saw tens of thousands march north up Michigan Avenue, was part of a successful nation-wide movement demanding an eight-hour work day. On May 1, 2000, anarchists, socialists, and workers from a vast array of industries will take to the streets of Chicago again, in much larger numbers than in recent years, at rallying points all over the downtown area. Diverse activists will present a list of demands born of the anti-globalization, anti-capitalist movement that got a tremendous shot in the arm on the streets of Seattle last November. And if day labor organizer Jose Landaverde is successful, a majority of those protesting on International Workers' Day will be day laborers, or, as he calls them, the slaves of the new millennium. Jose Landaverde is one of those people whose passion for justice is both deeply felt and infectious, whose tolerance for injustice is just about nil. A fiery, 27-year-old radical Catholic from El Salvador, at the age of ten Landaverde suffered the murder of his parents by the Salvadoran military. He and the rest of his family were forced into the jungle, joining the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) guerrilla forces out of necessity. At age 17 Landaverde himself was arrested by the military, for his work organizing among San Salvador's poor. Blindfolded, imprisoned, and tortured, upon his release Landaverde fled north to Guatemala, Mexico, and Los Angeles, where he worked for a time with a homeless organization. Restless, he moved on to Houston and then Chicago, where he came to rest at Su Casa Catholic Worker house on the southside about three years ago. Recently Landaverde worked with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless' Latino Task Force, but he says his ideas fell outside the scope of the Coalition's work. "I wanted to create something bigger, something that respected people's dignity, something that wasn't counting people like numbers," says Landaverde, now 27. He left the Coalition, taking with him a proposal he'd developed while there, the seeds for the creation of a Latino Union. The idea? "To create consciousness in people. To get people in front of the movement. We need to develop and support leaders from the grassroots. It's time for Latinos to move." Landaverde is hard at work generating participation in the Latino Union,which has three goals, initially: support for the rights of workers; opposition to gentrification of poor communities; and the organization of one of the larger of this year's May Day rallies, the Day Labor Strike.

Somethin's goin' on. . . say the Roots, Philadelphia's acoustic hip hop band, who have played benefits for Mumia Abu-Jamal. . . In recent years, attendance at May Day events in Chicago, which after all is birthplace to International Workers Day, has rarely exceeded a few hundred souls. This year's commemorations saw over a thousand, and renewed movement around the country. Why? Dennis Dixon, who worked with the umbrella May Day Coalition and also works with Networking for Democracy, sees the renewed activity as part of a "nascent 'anti-capitalist' sentiment among people" whose wages have plummeted over the last 20 years, who see a government unwilling and unable to tackle crucial social problems. "People see the movement of capital away from areas where there are relatively high wages to places where there are no enforceable labor or environmental laws. They see the sweatshops, and we get a lot of support at our pickets at Nike and the Gap. Corporate greed is a veritable buzzword," says Dixon.

So far, the Latino Union has drawn together groups that range from churches to activist groups like Jobs with Justice and Coalition for the Homeless, as well as radical Latino organizations such as Pueblo Sin Fronteras and the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. Landaverde hopes to see over 3,000 day laborers at the Strike. Established unions, including Service Employees International Union Local 73, have endorsed the Day Laborers Strike, which will travel the same path as the historic 1886 demonstration, starting at Michigan and Balbo Avenues and proceeding north to the Tribune Plaza. Day Labor in Chicago As in 1886, one issue that ranks high on the agenda for the Day Labor Strike is the length of the work day. According to Landaverde, day laborers often work up to 16 hours in a day, in substandard conditions, without hope of union representation, without benefits of any kind. Day labor agencies deduct payroll taxes from checks, money the laborers never see and that often ends up in the agencies' bank accounts. Non-payment and partial payment of wages is not uncommon. Undocumented workers in particular have feared speaking out, for fear of deportation. "These are not people usually involved in politics, they're just hungry," says Landaverde of the day laborers, who are predominantly African-American and Latino. "They are people reduced to slavery because they are looking for food." According to needs assessments conducted by the Latino Task Force, over half of the Mexican families living in Back of the Yards are involved in day labor; over a third of the Latino families of Little Village and West Town/Humboldt Park support themselves through day labor as well. One of the day laborers who will be attending Monday's Day Labor Strike is Luis Padillas, a stocky, unassuming man who immigrated to Chicago three years ago from Mexico City. Padillas is homeless and lives at Jose Obrero shelter in Pilsen. Padillas has worked through various southside day labor agencies; sometimes he washes dishes at nearby Chinese restaurants. In either setting, getting $30 for a day's work that lasts 12 to 14 hours is the norm, for he and many people he knows. "But you can't complain, because then they treat you bad, or drop you. The day labor agencies also deduct money from your check for transportation to a job, and then the driver will demand another dollar-fifty for the ride on top of that," says Padillas, via translator. The illegal practices are bad enough, but the day labor industry is adversely affecting labor practices across the country, legally. Since the mid-1980s, the replacement of regular employees with temporary workers has mushroomed, as part of the new corporate agenda. The day labor industry saves employers a lot of money, and seriously impacts the ability of all workers to receive fair treatment and decent wages. Most day laborers would prefer full-time, traditional work if it were available, according to a report published by the U.S. Dept. of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in December 1999. The average worker in a traditional, non-temporary job earned $540 a week in February of last year; the average temporary worker made $342, less than two-thirds as much. For Latinos working day labor, weekly wages were little more than half of the traditional workers' earnings, at $296. These are the official statistics; unofficially, Landaverde says that Chicago's day laborers fare far worse. Problems of Gender in Day Labor Women face additional societal, gender-based factors that exacerbate the inequalities. Those over age 40 often don't get hired, says Landaverde, because of their age. And, as always, the possibility of sexual harassment on the job multiplies for women workers who are undocumented. "Maria," who like Landaverde is Salvadoran, has lived in the Chicago area for ten years, working for half a dozen different day labor agencies. With her daughter translating, she says, "The agencies treat people badly. Verbally and in other ways. They wouldn't pay our wages sometimes." Worse, male personnel in the agency offices sexually assault young women working for the agency. "Most of the women I know of, who are assaulted, are girls from Mexico, ages 13 to 17. The male supervisors tell these girls to go get fake IDs so they can work. Then they seduce the girls, who can't report the assaults to anyone. The girls feel intimidated, and the men do things like threatening to burn down their houses." One instance witnessed by "Maria" is all too common, she says. "At Western Staff Services, at 51st and Cicero, they send people to work, and they work three or four hours, and sometimes they run out of materials. Well, I saw the men, the other personnel, treat the women workers really badly, screaming at them, chasing them around like they were animals. "I'd like to be able to put cameras in these places, so people can see how temp work is." These young women are the majority of the workers at day labor jobs in the country. According to the BLS, workers for the day labor agencies are "more likely than traditional workers to be women, under the age of 25, black, and[/or] Hispanic." Landaverde shows a mixture of anger at conditions such as "Maria" has seen, and compassion for survivors of such experiences. He sees the Day Labor Strike as part of the process of bringing such injustice to light. He and organizers of the Strike also see it as a means of calling for unions to unify in confronting day labor injustice. The strike and rally will also petition politicians and other leaders to create laws regulating day labor agencies; and propose that the city put up a million dollars for the creation of Workers Centers, to be self-managed by the workers. Workers Centers have proven to be particularly effective in recent years among women and in immigrant communities and communities of color. Asian Immigrant Women Advocates in San Francisco has developed women's leadership while also providing English classes and workshops on contract rights, labor regulations, health and safety rules, and wage and hour laws. In New York, the Latino Workers Center offers similar classes and has led successful protests against abusive employers. Anarchists, the Illinois Labor History Society, and the Day Labor Strike The Day Labor Strike is also being sponsored by the Illinois Labor History Society (ILHS), whose participation has drawn some criticism from those whose history tells them that the eight Haymarket martyrs were tried, convicted, and four of them hanged not just for their labor agitation, but for being anarchists. According to Darrell Gordon, a gay anarchist of African descent affiliated with the Autonomous Zone, the ILHS has gone to great lengths to revise the history surrounding the martyrs, who, in addition to being workers, were also revolutionary trade unionists and anarchists. "A lot of anarchists are upset that the Labor History Society is a part of this march," says Gordon. "The Labor History Society waters down who the Haymarket martyrs were." Landaverde is sympathetic to the criticism, but sees the tension as part of the process. As the movement for social justice grows in this country, certain tensions will have to be ironed out. "The anarchists are going to play a real important role" in the future, says Landaverde, who takes inspiration from the Haymarket anarchists. "They're always going to be there supporting the issues. Anarchists take a position like Jesus - fighting the structures and institutions that create top-down problems. " He adds that poor people today, particularly Latinos and African-Americans in Chicago, are living in situations similar to those faced by the immigrant communities from which the Haymarket martyrs came.

 

Luck of the Irish: My Night As a Pogue

[Author's note: this is a little story about the kind of thing that happened to people in the late '80s, a time that seems long, long ago and far, far away...I thought one or two of you might enjoy it . . . David]

I was at home reading when the phone rang. It was Randy, saying that Joe Strummer was touring with the Pogues, and that the Clash guitarist might show up at Phyllis' Musical Inn after their show that night at the Vic Theater.

"Wow."

I called Sara at the restaurant where she and I worked, told her the news. She told Jim, our bartender friend. They said let's go, hurry up.

I put a Clash album on the record player. Loud. Singing "I'm so bo-o-ored with the U. S. A." at the top of my lungs as I got dressed. I put all of my five dollars in my pocket and sped over to pick up Sara and Jim.

We sauntered into Phyllis', found one empty table, and parked ourselves at it. I think we all felt like star-gazers, but what the hell, it's Joe Strummer, not Madonna. We talked amongst ourselves, occasionally looking over at the door.

A guy come over to our table from the bar, a guy named Clem. He shook our hands, saying, "Listen, I love your music. I know you guys must be pretty tired, but would you play a song for us after while?"

Sara looked at me uncomprehendingly. I racked my brain, wondering why Clem thought we were tired, let alone why he might want us to go up on stage and sing a song in the first place. I'd been sitting quietly at home only an hour before. Maybe he'd heard my crooning to the Clash album?

When I looked over at Jim, I saw mischief in his eyes, I saw his snot green plaid shirt with the top button buttoned, the black jacket and tousled hair. I thought of my own tousled hair. Suddenly it became clear as the waters of the Liffey: nestled as we were in some little dive on Division Street, Chicago, our 15 minutes of fame had just begun. We were Pogues.

Clem asked us what kind of shots we wanted. I started to see myself as Clem must have seen me. I turned discreetly towards the wall and hooked the top button of my shirt.

The back of my brain began to tingle, it formed strange, broken words I couldn't really understand. All of a sudden they came tumbling out, in some half-assed Irish brogue: "'Ave you gawt a jug of Jameson?"

Jim chimed in: "Ay, Jameson! I'll 'ave Jameson!" Sara smiled obliquely, unbelieving, saying nothing.

Clem went to fetch the bottle of whiskey, and the three of us looked at each other wide-eyed. Free shots!

We all kept hush, wondering how what was happening was happening. Jim always looks vaguely Irish, and I could feel a gap forming between my two front teeth, and Sara—Sara, my girlfriend—a groupie?

Then I couldn't remember how to spell my name, was it S-E-A-N or was it S-H-A-N-E?

We tried on our new-found accents, like trying on a pair of very stiff shoes.

People were beginning to look at us. Whispering in their neighbors' ears. When they started pointing, discreetly at first, fear crept around our table.

Clem came back with the bottle, and poured out four shots. Lucky guy!, I thought, drinking shots with the Pogues in his own bar on Division Street in the U.S.A. He poured out four more, we tossed them back.

Leaning towards Clem, I muttered, "Listen, mate, we'd love to sing a toon for yas, but our throats is a bit tyred, you know." Clem understood.

"Maybe we could sing for yas loiter," offered Jim, the shoe in his mouth slipping over the water from a brogue to a sabot. "And how's about another spill from the jug?" Clem poured out three more; Sara was slowing down.

The whiskey helped us fill out our roles a bit. We smoked like rock stars, laughed as only Pogues can laugh. People were starting to stare, but no one dared approach. Clem begged us for a tune again, but I couldn't think of even one song I knew all the worlds to. A tin whistle from hell was ringing in my ears, how could I possibly sing? Just then, Jim said to Clem, "Can't do it mate, gawt to get go-in', gawt a gig toomarra up in the Mota City."

We were off the hook for the moment. Until the band, Tribe, looked over at us, offering their guitars and drumsticks for us to use. The pressure was reaching a crescendo, and we made a beeline for the door. The phony accents couldn't hold up much longer, and all those leering fans, and now the band looking to us. . . .

We laughed hysterically as we drove towards Jim's apartment. Too bad we didn't have the nerve to carry the charade on, but we really couldn't sing. Joe Strummer hadn't shown up, but we had a good time anyways.

Then, something snapped in my head again, in a different part this time. Why the hell not carry the charade on, somewhere else? Sara looked doubtful (groupies often do), but eventually she saw the limelight, and we headed over to the Lizard Lounge.

Joe the bouncer recognized us first, our accents and tousled Pogue hair tipping him off. No cover charge for us? Great. Shots? Sure, 'ave yas got Jameson? One of the waitresses took a liking to Jim. Told him we should go to a joint called the Riptide later on, they had a four o'clock.

"A four o'clock whot?," asked Jim coyly.

Joe poured out some shots for us. We downed them and took off. Jim wanted to go to the Dearborn Social Club, in the Rush Street area, of all the unlikely places. It felt good to be normal, non-Pogues again, no one recognized us there. But those tinglings started in my brain again, and I asked the bartender if he couldn't stand us three drinks for the price of one, "You see we just gawt to 'merica, Ir-r-rish you know, don't 'ave much green. Thanks, mate." No problem.

Next stop, Exit. We considered; this was going to be a tough nut to crack. Exit people might actually know what a Pogue looks like. We sat in the car, debating. Finally I climbed out, and went up to the doorman. "Listen, Oi've gawt a Pogue with me out in the cah. We'd loike to come in, but we'd loike to keep it real low key. Alroite?"

Alright. Sara parked the car, Jim donned sunglasses. The doorman waved us in inconspicuously, waving the $5 cover charges at the same time. He saw to it that we weren't bothered during our stay, and we danced a bit to get some of the whiskey out of our systems. No one recognized us though, so we got bored and left. On the way out I slipped the guy a few bucks. "Thanks for the good work, mate."

We headed over to the Riptide in Bucktown. By now we'd had so many shots, felt so many stares piercing our veneer, stardom was wearing thin at three in the morning. Jim didn't even care that his waitress from the Lizard Lounge wasn't at the Riptide, and the folks in the bar didn't give a fuck who we were. We had to pay for our beers.

Jim started singing and yelling at the top of his lungs, slamming his beer bottle on a tabletop. Sara yawned as I half-heartedly tried to quiet Jim down. We weren't appreciated any longer, it was time to call it quits.We stumbled out to the car. I threw my beer bottle towards a dumpster, it shattered with a crash on the pavement.

Jim climbed in the back seat, and Sara turned the key in the ignition, and the engine warmed up. I heard a knock on the window; some guy and three of his buddies from the bar. He asked if we were looking for trouble. I rolled down the window to say no, puga mahon, I don't know what trouble you're talking about, but his fist bopped me on the forehead before any words, Irish or not, could get out.

Sara quickly put the care in gear, and we pulled away, leaving our assailants behind. So much for stardom, I thought, a vague throbbing working its way through the whiskey and beer in my head.

We all laughed (although I only laughed half-heartedly, otherwise it hurt), and dropped Jim off at his apartment. Sara said something about the bubble being burst. I guess that's how stardom works in America, one minute you're loved, and the next thing you know you've got a bump on the head. Jim called the next afternoon. "Better cancel Detroit, ay mate?"

"Ay."

I checked my pants pocket for money. I still had two dollars.

 

The Wicker Park
Problem:

A Proposal

--David Meyers

Yes, the closing of Hot House, Urbus Orbis, and the Busy Bee is sad. Worthy of a funeral procession like the one held early in September during the Around the Coyote festival of property. Worthy of a movement to stem the flow of gentrification?
Imagine if you'd been born and grown up in Wicker Park, and every single candy store and restaurant you'd ever known had been shut down, demolished, torched, rehabbed, gentrified. Worthy of a funeral procession? Worthy of a movement to stem the land grab that destroys homes, families, whole communities.

Here is my proposal.

Whereas:
Even the healthy aspects of bohemianism have been fouled by the agenda of real estate developers, some politicians, and some lovers of art, transformed into a cog in the engine driving Latinos and other low-income people out of Wicker Park;
Opposition to gentrification by the artist and activist newcomers to Wicker Park has taken diverse and creative forms, but have been disconnected and somewhat isolated, and in retrospect ineffective;
Displacement of Latinos and others - including newcomer artists and activists - from Wicker Park continues, and we artists and activists are part of this process and therefore partly responsible;
Displacement is taking place in other areas in Chicago, and in cities across the country;
Gentrification is in large part a manifestation of racism, and to take part in racist movements is harmful not only to the displaced and marginalized, but to the displacer, who becomes overcome with the cynicism, apathy, and inhibited creativity that would threaten a truly vital arts community;
Effects of the current invasion of urban ghettos on low-income people mirrors the (continuing) decimation and displacement of Native Americans over the past two centuries, a decimation accomplished in fact by the westward movement of common pioneers and settlers, who allowed themselves to be used as pawns of government, the wealthy, and alligiance to the reprehensible practice of "white makes right";
Life without a sense of justice, freedom, and cultural integrity and autonomy becomes boring, deathly, oppressive, and in becoming pawns we have lost our own autonomy;
All people ought to have equal access to at least the minimum necessities of living, and gentrification denies one of those necessities, fair and equal housing;

And If:
Newcomer artists and activists have an interest in stemming the flow of a racist agenda;
Our declarations of love and appreciation of humanity and other cultures are to have any meaning;
Maintaining health, home, and social bonds are deemed to be as important for one set of people as for another;
We believe that racism and its local manifestation in gentrification are a bad business to be involved in, and that our indifference to the plights of others harms our own spirits and lives;
It is possible to put respect for others and their differences into practice on a more
comprehensive scale, and become a positive force in this area;

Then:
Those of us white, European-descended people and others living in the Wicker Park/West Town/Humboldt Park/Logan Square areas come together to form a group or a group of groups dedicated to acting in concert to challenge racism and its clearest local manifestation, gentrification. This can be an opportunity to take responsibility for our place and actions in the world, as well as
generate community spirit of our own;
Newcomer activists, artists, and individuals involved with Centro Sin Fronteras, Puerto Rican Cultural Center, Autonomous Zone, Anti-Racist Action, West Town Tenants Union and other organizations as well as independent or unaffiliated artists, activists and
concerned people meet and move to action. We all come from different places, have different ideas and talents; this doesn't need to inhibit action.
Of course, this can be a multiethnic grouping, as some people of color are in somewhat the same boat. To be real, though, the coloring of the Wicker Park invasion is 96% white.
This is a call to action, not further theorizing divorced from action.
I think it's important now to resist the urge to keep on moving on, into Humboldt Park, Pilsen, wherever, and say clearly, "NO. I will no longer be manipulated like a pawn in service of a racist agenda."