Access Living Jane Addams Senior Caucus Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization

Logan Square Neighborhood Association Lugenia Burns Hope Center Metropolitan Tenants Organization Pilsen Alliance
Organizing Neighborhoods for Equality: Northside People for Community Recovery Southside Together Organizing for Power

Statement in Response to May Day Vandalism of Alderman Morenos office

Chicago Housing Initiative condemns the act of vandalism of Alderman Joe Morenos office this past Monday, May 1. The
self-proclaimedly anti-capitalist group which took responsibility for smashing the glass of the 1 st ward offices front door on
May Day claims to have committed this vandalism as an action in protest of gentrification in the Logan Square and Humboldt
Park communities. They argue that they have tried the old channels for creating change to combat gentrification, and
know they are dead ends.

To the group of citizens responsible for this action, we say, think bigger.

Yes, an unregulated housing market is going to wreak havoc on all communities where developers see a profit potential, and
yes, profit potential in an unfettered capital system is synonymous with displacement. Communities that can be flipped are
communities that can be profited from. And the inverse: Communities that are profited from are communities that are
flipped, destroyed, re-made, obliterated. Yes, the plight of low-income families and especially low-income families of color is
being monetized by this system. Yes, this system is violent and cruel. And yes, it needs to be transformed.

But smashing windows doesnt transform. It doesnt educate, it doesnt call us together or build our capacity to make
change. It just scapegoats a single public official for a broken system, very little of which he has control or influence over.

Its appropriate to ask Aldermen to do anything and everything within their power to fight for the affordable housing we
know our communities need. But the example the vandals give, MiCa Towers, discredits their own action: Where Alderman
Moreno had influence, ensuring affordable units on site in this development, he did. In fact, the MiCa development actually
has a higher number of affordable units than is required by city law, which is the result of Alderman Moreno and community
activists using the leverage-points available in the rezoning process to mandate on-site affordable housing (which is candidly
a step above what most northside Aldermen do), and then exceeding the best legal guidelines in terms of the number of
units provided on-site. And by the way, households that are formerly homeless and currently at-risk of homelessness,
including many with disabilities, are moving in to this wheelchair accessible housing now. And by the way, wheelchair
accessible housing doesnt really exist in Chicago without new construction elevator buildings.

We get it: The MiCa Towers are a useful symbol of high profile development driven by private-capital in a gentrifying
neighborhood. Were angry at the private market for being what it is to, but unfortunately, American democracy doesnt
subject the actions of private industry to a popular vote, or to the fiat of a single local Alderman. Alderman Moreno doesnt
have a magic wand to make capitalism and its exploitative ravages of the housing market disappear. The best tools we have
available right now are inclusionary zoning tools, and he used these to their fullest extent. If we want to do something
useful and true, lets fight for better tools.

The vandals here have named a problem that is real but taken a course of action that lacks vision and provides no
leadership. If theyre concerned--- appropriately--- about the impact of free market capitalism on housing stability and
affordability, then start organizing for rent control. Alderman Moreno would probably sponsor it, unlike a lot of the
Aldermen who do far less than this Alderman does for affordable housing in his own ward and in citywide housing policy
fights, who yet somehow escape protest by the leftist cool kids.
More to the point, we who are organizers have a job to provide actual leadership and real responses to the economic
realities that are afflicting our communities. Pretending that a single Alderman is, or could be, responsible for either causing
or ending gentrification is false analysis that leads us nowhere. Significantly, since this issue cut of the problem is false,
carrying out a campaign to demonize a single Aldermen for the impact of free market forces will do very little to change the
material circumstances of the families with whom we organize.

Lets think and act bigger. We need a systems change. Lets stop venting like children and organize for it.