70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green
Poverty in this country is being treated like a crime. It always has been. The sins of the poor are said to be committed by people who are just too lazy and idle to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and get ahead. Never mind that those bootstraps may have been stuck to the pavement with institutional racism, class warfare, and redlining; in the politicians’ and wealthy’s jaundiced eye, we all start from scratch and the reason why we’re not millionaires is because we’re not hungry enough.
So it should come as no surprise when filmmaker Ronit Bezalel notes that despite one’s best efforts at success, there were forces working against them trying to keep them down in her illuminating documentary “70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green.” And nowhere is this more true than where you live.
Where certain people could live is what created Cabrini Green. The famous Chicago housing project was constructed as a separate enclave for Southern African-Americans who were migrating northwards masse after World War II. In order to accommodate so many new residents all at once but without having enough space available high-rises were built on top of each other until they reached into clouds (or rather just 15 stories). There was a saying among white families living nearby: “If you lose something while walking through Cabrini Green, don’t bother looking for it on the ground.” This wasn’t entirely racist hyperbole either; drugs rained down from windows above all day long without any regard whatsoever for gravity or common sense.
Cabrini Green had its own police force which did little more than protect property rights within its boundaries but often at gunpoint if necessary. It also had its own mayor (with real political power) representing interests quite different from those outside his fiefdom. This was due partly because City Hall saw an opportunity here: if they couldn’t keep blacks out of white neighborhoods entirely then why not just concentrate them all in one place where control would be easier? But mostly it happened because once people moved into Cabrini Green, they never left again until death took them away.
According to the film, “70 Acres,” before there was Cabrini Green there was a neighborhood called Little Sicily. It was about 15 blocks south and east of where the projects are today. There were Italians, Jews, and Blacks living side by side none of whom could legally live anywhere else. The city destroyed Little Sicily in the same way that it would destroy Cabrini Green six decades later: by tearing down everything and replacing it with something new but different (and more restrictive).
The only difference is this time when many Italian and Jewish families moved into white neighborhoods their former black neighbors couldn’t come with them. Those people went to Cabrini Green instead, which at the beginning of our story is being turned into mixed-income housing that many displaced residents won’t qualify for either.
Bezalel’s “70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green” is her second film about the housing project, and one of its strengths is how casually it indicates the passage of time. For instance, every time we check in with him, we meet a teenager named Raymond McDonald who is a little older and wiser. In miniature, Raymond’s story is the movie. He is present for all of Cabrini Green’s conversion. We see him at the start asking Mayor Daley how he would feel about being removed from his own neighborhood as well as in a botched interaction with new White residents of the first mixed-income housing (“They don’t want me here,” he says to the camera).
We learn that his successful dog training business has become a casualty of the increasingly strict rules of the new houses rules that affect lower-income residents much more than their new neighbors and we watch him move on from there. We also follow older activists Mark Pratt and Deirdre Brewster as they speak out against changes.
Though it runs a (too short) 60 minutes, “70 Acres” says much about gentrification and “mixed-income” housing which feels like a slow-moving social experiment gone wrong. “In theory,” says Mark Joseph, an associate professor of Community Practice, “the most basic thing this is supposed to do is reconnect those living in public housing to the rest of the community.”
The results are middling at best; one new neighbor throws block parties that are barely attended by any mix of different income residents, who tend to stay in their own groups anyway. Also as the film goes on we notice that those former Cabrini residents lucky enough to transition over have become fearful for what seems like every condition stacked against them any bad behavior complained about by neighbors will result in eviction.
“To live here you need to be a nun,” says one resident about numerous new safety rule changes. One of these rules is that if you have any kind of criminal record (even a misdemeanor), you are not allowed to live in the new houses. One woman describes how her 18 year old daughter, who had been arrested for fighting in school years prior, could not live with the rest of the family. “If you have a record of any kind,” another resident says, “and in Cabrini Green it’s very likely somebody in your family does, you won’t be living in the new Cabrini Green.”
Bezalel does a good job editing together many years of footage, telling her story through politicians’ interactions with residents and educators’ historical context. She stands back, offering no solutions while letting the viewer draw his or her own emotional conclusions. Joy, sorrow and anger exist above and below the surface but “70 Acres” never forces one’s response though I’m sure my own experiences seeing my hometown undergo a similar transformation teased out more anger in me than some viewers may feel.
The year 1995 started demolition of the Cabrini Green public housing project, and it didn’t end until 2011. “Seventy Acres” is a funeral for that building, complete with a New Orleans style second line and a drumline, with former residents returning from across the country to see it off. One man, who has since moved out to the suburbs, says that he is less comfortable in his new home than he was in Cabrini Green, even though it’s safer.
“There was violence,” he says of the projects, “but there was also a sense of community that surrounded you.” This idea of dealing with the Devil we know is completely lost on most pro gentrification people. This film connects today’s gentrification which always comes with an attitude of “it’s for your own good” with previous versions that were more explicitly race and class based. You can’t lift up one poor neighborhood without kicking out its current residents and creating another one somewhere else. The circle goes around and around, but still doesn’t get broken.
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