Speaker 1: Push it. This is a tough city to love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a city that hurts you, and to be
Speaker 1: in love with it is like being in an abusive relationship.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that's how I feel in this relationship with you.
Speaker 1: I hope not. I hope not. I'm Khalil Jibra Muhammad.
Speaker 1: I'm Ben Austin. We're two best friends, one black, one white.
Speaker 1: I'm a historian and I'm a journalist, and this is
Speaker 1: some of my best friends are so yeah. So here
Speaker 1: we are back with season two. We are going to
Speaker 1: be talking about everything from politics to pop culture, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna have guests on too. This season. History always
Speaker 1: matters and everything we cover, and of course this is
Speaker 1: an election year. We got mid terms. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking on this show in the midst of the launch
Speaker 1: of the presidential race. So there's going to be so
Speaker 1: much to figure out and to invite so many best friends,
Speaker 1: some old, some new to help us make sense of
Speaker 1: the madness of the moment we're still living in. So
Speaker 1: today's episode is really special. Khalil, we got to do
Speaker 1: a live taping together in our hometown. The boys are
Speaker 1: back in town. We went back to where it all began,
Speaker 1: that's right. So it was actually on September eleventh, ye
Speaker 1: and it was a crazy rainy day. There was a
Speaker 1: torrential rain. There was also the Bears home opener. I
Speaker 1: remember that we got caught in some traffic monsoon conditions.
Speaker 1: But you know what they say about rain, like you know,
Speaker 1: and rain for weddings is like a good sign. It's
Speaker 1: a sense of renewal, promise of a fresh start. I
Speaker 1: felt that way, perfect metaphor. We did the taping as
Speaker 1: part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, and we got to
Speaker 1: talk at this amazing venue, the South Sure Cultural Center,
Speaker 1: you know, where we both spent time and as kids.
Speaker 1: This just beautiful space that we sat in, like a
Speaker 1: glass atrium, just about a block from Lake Michigan. You know,
Speaker 1: even on that rainy day, once it cleared, like the
Speaker 1: sun started to come in and just the space itself
Speaker 1: felt magical. It's a place where for many decades some
Speaker 1: of Chicago's elite Southsiders would go there to play golf,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was not a place that was
Speaker 1: actually welcoming to everyone, but it is today. And that's
Speaker 1: what's so important about the Chicago Humanities Festival hosting it there,
Speaker 1: and for you and I to be in that space
Speaker 1: to not only talk about what it means to be chicagoing,
Speaker 1: but to do it with our own hometown community very special.
Speaker 1: So let's cut to the live tape. I mean, here
Speaker 1: we are in reality, but let's go to the recording.
Speaker 1: Let's do it just to place this moment in context.
Speaker 1: We're here at south Shore Cultural Center. I mean I
Speaker 1: remember walking by here as a kid. I literally spent
Speaker 1: my earliest years at sixty ninth in Oglesby, which is
Speaker 1: four blocks from where we are, just across the street,
Speaker 1: at a place. It was a non discript apartment building,
Speaker 1: but I went to a nursery pre k place called
Speaker 1: Toddler's Inn. So Ben, Yeah, I grew up in south Shore.
Speaker 1: So I grew up not too far from here and
Speaker 1: played tennis here when it was still it was called
Speaker 1: the South Shore Country Club, but wasn't really a country
Speaker 1: club anymore. And actually people from my neighborhood helped preserve
Speaker 1: it and then restore it. Yeah, there was sort of
Speaker 1: a discussion about what would happen, what its next iteration
Speaker 1: would be. And here we are. Yeah, it looks great,
Speaker 1: you know, here we are in Chicago, and we're in
Speaker 1: a city that's demonized all the time and that has
Speaker 1: all sorts of population changes going on, and even with
Speaker 1: a mayoral race, you know, heating up. There's so many
Speaker 1: discussions about the city in its present form and its future,
Speaker 1: and so this question of like, well, what does it
Speaker 1: mean to be a Chicago and what is a Chicago identity?
Speaker 1: And a way to come at that is just to
Speaker 1: talk at least at the start of like what it
Speaker 1: means to us. Yeah. Yeah, so our producers of the
Speaker 1: show often tell us, like, our listeners only care so
Speaker 1: much about Chicago. So since we're here, we get to
Speaker 1: lean into that a little bit and actually talk about
Speaker 1: our origin story. Yeah, so let's start with a Chicago
Speaker 1: What is your Chicago origin story? Yeah? How did you
Speaker 1: get here? Yeah? So you heard I teach at Harvard,
Speaker 1: which is you know what you think it is really
Speaker 1: snobby and arrogant and this sort of thing, but a
Speaker 1: lot of smarts to everybody. That's how long it took
Speaker 1: him to mention Harvard, Like that is the that's the
Speaker 1: longest so far. It's a guarantee there it is whatever. Whatever. So,
Speaker 1: So it came up because I was teaching just this week,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about the fact that I happened
Speaker 1: to be a third generation Chicagoan. So my parents were
Speaker 1: born here. Shorty Ruff by the way, for a listeners,
Speaker 1: since he regards as my mother's nicknames as a tough customer.
Speaker 1: My mother was born here, her mother was born here,
Speaker 1: and that's the third generation. And so it happens. My
Speaker 1: great grandmother, Laura Oliver, married in the nineteen twenties a
Speaker 1: man named Eugene Gavin. This is your mother's side of
Speaker 1: the Fantasies, my mother's side of who migrated from Mississippi.
Speaker 1: They both migrated from Mississippi. They could not marry there,
Speaker 1: but they married here in the nineteen twenties. And so
Speaker 1: I take a measure of pride of actually being basically
Speaker 1: the sentence of people who got here at the turn
Speaker 1: of the century, or not quite the turn of the century,
Speaker 1: but in the nineteen twenties and therefore the early great migration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you you have a lot of roots here, a
Speaker 1: lot of routes. So I was born here and my parents,
Speaker 1: who were in the audience wave Boston's, Yes, they moved
Speaker 1: to Chicago in their early thirties. My father got a
Speaker 1: job at the University of Chicago. So there they you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I guess I'm like that make me a first
Speaker 1: generation And and they stayed, you know, they moved here
Speaker 1: and stayed, which is another sort of you know, cities
Speaker 1: are about are measured in some ways by their um
Speaker 1: you know, their their ability to attract people and attract
Speaker 1: business and then to retain them, right um and so um.
Speaker 1: You know you're talking about the black migration, and you
Speaker 1: know before that, the you know, the beginning of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, and even before immigrants from Europe. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties, so many people from Mexico who
Speaker 1: moved here, and you know, to the point that Latinos
Speaker 1: are a third of the population. Now do you have
Speaker 1: some Latino heritage? This is I'm just riffing here. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and then and then i'd say that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: my wife and I had a kind of professional walk
Speaker 1: about where we moved all over the country and decided
Speaker 1: at some point about ten years ago that we wanted
Speaker 1: to come back home and we wanted our kids to
Speaker 1: be raised here around our family. And this is where
Speaker 1: sort of you know, we wanted to make our stand.
Speaker 1: You know, like when you you live in other cities,
Speaker 1: there's a kind of there's a kind of great freedom
Speaker 1: at times of not being rooted there where you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry so much about the messy history, you
Speaker 1: don't have to own it, and here you have to
Speaker 1: own it, but the stakes are higher. Yeah. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I h I have moved from Chicago since essentially I
Speaker 1: was twenty two years old, so unlike Ben Um, I
Speaker 1: haven't been back, and I've been enjoying the city by
Speaker 1: virtue of family and relatives who live here. My mom
Speaker 1: lived here until quite recently her entire life had never
Speaker 1: lived literally anywhere else. So I'm a little bit opposite
Speaker 1: to Ben and that I chose not to come back
Speaker 1: to Chicago. But is this a good place to make
Speaker 1: your announcement at the return run from mayor? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well isn't everybody doing that? I mean to bring that
Speaker 1: up inside Joe, because I said if I ever came
Speaker 1: back Chicago, I'd want to come back to be mayor.
Speaker 1: So this is actually this is actually real talk. But
Speaker 1: but I want to say just one more thing about
Speaker 1: the other side of my family, which is more famous.
Speaker 1: And again, listeners of the show at least know this.
Speaker 1: So it turns out that Ben lives today a couple
Speaker 1: of blocks from where my great grandfather, Elijah Muhammad, who
Speaker 1: was also a migrant from Georgia born in eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: arrived in Chicago sometime in the night thirties and ultimately
Speaker 1: built the Nation of Islam, which all of you know
Speaker 1: is part of the Hyde Park, Knwid area and where
Speaker 1: Ben and Danielle's family currently live. And of course that's
Speaker 1: another kind of Chicago story that makes not only the
Speaker 1: city quite unique and interesting, but also makes this entire
Speaker 1: area and thinking about a Chicago identity fascinating. Going something
Speaker 1: we talked about when we were thinking about this show,
Speaker 1: like where else in America could you imagine like Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 1: Elijah Muhammad, Jesse Jackson, eventually Michelle and Barack Obama and
Speaker 1: Harold Washington as notes of some of the most important
Speaker 1: political debates movements in America. Pretty awesome. Hey, this is Khalil.
Speaker 1: We need to take a short break. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to some of my best friends are I'm
Speaker 1: doing that time space continuum thing and I'm not at
Speaker 1: the live event. But now we're going to go back
Speaker 1: to the live event from the Chicago Humanities Festival, and
Speaker 1: so so we talked about, you know, what are our
Speaker 1: Chicago origin stories. But there's a way where to feel
Speaker 1: like there's also a consciousness about being a Chicago and
Speaker 1: a kind of Chicago being sort of imprinted on your DNA.
Speaker 1: And we were younger before people really got tattoos of
Speaker 1: like the Chicago flag or anything like that or three
Speaker 1: one two tattoos or seven seventy three or so, you know,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that moment where we really sort of
Speaker 1: started to think of Chicago as integral to our identity. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: do it how you first? Okay, for me, it had
Speaker 1: to do with driving. I could think of a specific moment.
Speaker 1: I think it's the summer after high school, so this
Speaker 1: is like nineteen eighty nine, and maybe it was nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety and I had a job as a bagel delivery man,
Speaker 1: I remember that. And then to have the white pickup truck. Then, see,
Speaker 1: you had to you had to make it scary. I
Speaker 1: had a job as a bagel delivery man and I
Speaker 1: had to get up at five am, and it was
Speaker 1: called the Bagel Nosh and it was a bagel store
Speaker 1: on rush Street and Rush Street of nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: or nineteen ninety was sort of like in transition that
Speaker 1: if you're older, Rush Street signifies kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: something a red light district or a sort of like
Speaker 1: kind of sleazy a little bit, and today it's pretty
Speaker 1: gentrified and ritzy. It was sort of both at that moment,
Speaker 1: or like probably more on the sleazy side. And now
Speaker 1: I'd get there at five am, and I'd have to
Speaker 1: pull in an alley behind the shop and like flash
Speaker 1: my brights to clear out all the rats who would
Speaker 1: scurry away. And then I would load up the truck
Speaker 1: with bagels and drive all over the city. And there
Speaker 1: was a feeling of as a young person too, of
Speaker 1: moving through the city at a time when there weren't
Speaker 1: a lot of people there and where it felt like
Speaker 1: I kind of had ownership of the city. It felt
Speaker 1: like something out of like a Carl Sandburg poem, where
Speaker 1: like this this Goliath which is asleep and and and
Speaker 1: here I am, you know, seeing and part of the
Speaker 1: mechanism that's going to be when it wakes, and you
Speaker 1: know they're the only other people out there were other
Speaker 1: delivery people, you know, the newspaper trucks and things like that,
Speaker 1: and also traversing the city in a way that I
Speaker 1: hadn't before, either of going through the loop, but also
Speaker 1: like the south side and you'd have to come back
Speaker 1: on State Street, down the State Street corridor of where
Speaker 1: there were you know, used to be public housing for miles,
Speaker 1: and I just felt like I got a better understanding
Speaker 1: of the city, of being a part of it, of
Speaker 1: its geography and its segregation. And yeah, I felt at
Speaker 1: that point like like a kind of pride of place. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: you know, people often say that you have to leave
Speaker 1: a city to actually appreciate what you've lost or what
Speaker 1: you had, and I think of this kind of consciousness
Speaker 1: Chicago consciousness of a slightly different way. So I was
Speaker 1: about nine years old when my father moved to New York.
Speaker 1: He'd left Chicago. He'd worked at Johnson and Johnson Publishing
Speaker 1: as a photographer. He spent an entire career as a photojournalist,
Speaker 1: but he got his start with Johnson Publishing, and he
Speaker 1: leaves for Charlotte in nineteen seventy eight, land in New
Speaker 1: York by nineteen eighty and he's still there. So I
Speaker 1: visited him about nine years old for the first time,
Speaker 1: and I'm visiting with his friends, his new New York
Speaker 1: area friends who have kids, and the mom in this
Speaker 1: relationship is keeping me for the weekend because by then
Speaker 1: my father was a bachelor, and so you know, he's
Speaker 1: keeping me for the summer, where I really spent a
Speaker 1: lot of childhood summers from about nine to fifteen or sixteen.
Speaker 1: And so I meet this brood of like kids of
Speaker 1: all ages, younger than me, older than me. They welcome
Speaker 1: me into their family and within seconds of talking to them,
Speaker 1: someone's like, you have a funny accent. I was like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? And they were like, you
Speaker 1: just said ten And I was like what ten. They're like,
Speaker 1: no ten. I was like, no ten. Anyway, it was
Speaker 1: by Mississippi accent by way of Chicago that these New
Speaker 1: Yorkers who were my peers as kids were picking up on.
Speaker 1: And that was literally the first moment when I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, holy smokes, like I sound different. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's then you had to be like
Speaker 1: us and them, and I'm on team us. I'm on
Speaker 1: team Chicago. Well it did make me very proud out
Speaker 1: This is just did you did you do the thing?
Speaker 1: Where you then like went home and like practice, So
Speaker 1: you didn't say you said, Ken, Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: wanted to get to Harvard eventually, so I had to
Speaker 1: get rid of the accent. I mean, so so I
Speaker 1: had something similar. I mean maybe everyone does who's from
Speaker 1: Chicago where you travel? And maybe maybe this is even
Speaker 1: more of a white thing where other where you meet
Speaker 1: people and they're like, oh, you're from Chicago. I'm from Chicago.
Speaker 1: And I would always call it like the double question, yep,
Speaker 1: because the next question was where are you from? Right?
Speaker 1: Not not from Chicago. They want to know if you're
Speaker 1: from Deerfield or Wheneck or whatever. They didn't really meet Chicago, ye.
Speaker 1: And so there's also that, you know, not just defining
Speaker 1: it of another city, but of like suburb or city. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I wanted to talk about the first time I
Speaker 1: remember being pissed off as a Chicago in two and
Speaker 1: that is when I was about ten years old. I
Speaker 1: had to commute to Chatham from Regent's Park where I
Speaker 1: lived by that age. And this was Regent's Park is
Speaker 1: a fifty first and Lakeshore drive. To this day, you
Speaker 1: can actually see it on a clear day from from
Speaker 1: just outside this window. And I was especially going to
Speaker 1: this elementary school at eighty third and Saint Lawrence called
Speaker 1: Dixon Elementary, and my mom just wanted continuity. So rather
Speaker 1: than me coming to go to Ray or something like that,
Speaker 1: I stayed going to Dixon. So I had catched the
Speaker 1: number one from Lakeshore Drive to Cottage Grove and the
Speaker 1: number four Cottage Grow from fifty first to eighty third
Speaker 1: STREETEP Deep Deep Chicago, Deep Chicago. And I remember one
Speaker 1: winter day it was about negative forty degrees, as was
Speaker 1: commonly true back in those days, in early eighties, when
Speaker 1: global warming wasn't what it is today, and the bus
Speaker 1: took forever to come. When it finally arrived, it was
Speaker 1: so full with people it didn't even stop at the
Speaker 1: like and this is a memory series in my marria.
Speaker 1: I literally screamed out of frustration, picked up the nearest
Speaker 1: rock I could find, and hurled it at the back
Speaker 1: of the bus. I mean, this is not a prideful moment,
Speaker 1: but it is the moment when I thought, like this
Speaker 1: city sucks, right, like trying to get to school and
Speaker 1: I'm freezing. So that was a story. The last one
Speaker 1: I want to tell about being a Chicagoan. Is so
Speaker 1: you heard about the Schomberg Center, which is a cultural
Speaker 1: institution in Harlem, been around since in nineteen twenties, really
Speaker 1: important place. But for anyone who's visited Harlem, has anyone
Speaker 1: visited Harlem in this audience, Okay? You know Harlem mights
Speaker 1: think that black Harlem is the as used to be called,
Speaker 1: the Negro capital of the world, and therefore tremendous amounts
Speaker 1: of pride in that place. And I kind of spent
Speaker 1: the first couple of years as the director of the
Speaker 1: Schaumberg in twenty eleven, kind of pushing back against that.
Speaker 1: I mean, like literally from the stage of the institution,
Speaker 1: reminding them that Harlem had never produced the political geniuses
Speaker 1: and the political grates that Chicago had produced, going back
Speaker 1: to Oscar DePriest, who was the first black person to
Speaker 1: go to Congress after reconstruction, and that Adam Clayton Powell Junior, who,
Speaker 1: of course, with the famous Congressman, didn't get there to
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, and then of course all the other
Speaker 1: stuff leading up to the President Obama and all that
Speaker 1: was just gravy. But I felt very prideful in Harlem
Speaker 1: reminding them that my city was actually better. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that makes me think that there's another way that you
Speaker 1: you get a Chicago consciousness or for us, like we're
Speaker 1: as professionals, we've also studied Chicago. I've written about Chicago.
Speaker 1: It's part of our work, and so maybe we just
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit, about approaching it the
Speaker 1: city when it becomes an idea that you are grappling
Speaker 1: with in that way. And one of the things I started,
Speaker 1: as you know, you've written this book, tell tell everyone
Speaker 1: about well I wrote my first book is about public
Speaker 1: housing in Chicago. It's about Cabrini Green is called High Risers,
Speaker 1: but and and working on it. I also start to
Speaker 1: think about how little Chicago as a subject was part
Speaker 1: of my education. Was that true for you too? Did
Speaker 1: you ever have like, yeah, no, it's formally. I we
Speaker 1: talked about this a lot, like situating ourselves as kids
Speaker 1: in this important city we don't remember, like being taught
Speaker 1: about this first black mayor in the moment, and the
Speaker 1: significance of that as something transformational both for the national
Speaker 1: politics but also for the meaning of the city itself.
Speaker 1: Even though we literally lived, you know, in the same
Speaker 1: neighborhood as Harold Washington did. Yeah, I don't even remember, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know when I say remember, meaning it could have happened.
Speaker 1: I just wasn't paying attention, but being assigned books like
Speaker 1: The Jungle or uh, you know, Upton Sinclair's muck Raking book.
Speaker 1: Remember Richard write books? You know, Native Son, h a
Speaker 1: Black Boy. I don't remember. Those were not books. It's
Speaker 1: part of the curriculum. Um, you didn't take the African
Speaker 1: American Literature elective at Kenwood. Is that part of it? Yea, yeah, yeah, maybe, Okay,
Speaker 1: see you you you were you know, you were still wrestling.
Speaker 1: I was still whiteness, Jewish identity kind of thing still.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just it was not it was not so prevalent.
Speaker 1: So I think, you know, part of it was like
Speaker 1: just going back and devouring everything, studying the history of
Speaker 1: the city and the literature about the city, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're going to be a Chicago writer,
Speaker 1: like to try to learn everything about it. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I think it's something about the richness of everything we
Speaker 1: experienced in a community of people nurturing us that made
Speaker 1: it possible to look back and later see the city
Speaker 1: as something worth knowing. So, for example, Ben's father as
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago professor emeritus. We both were at
Speaker 1: Reagenstein as kids, but by accident I ended up writing
Speaker 1: about the University of Chicago in my work because it
Speaker 1: was the first real place for the study of the
Speaker 1: city and the study of the city as a place
Speaker 1: of immigrant assimilation. The study of the city is quote
Speaker 1: unquote back then race relations. And here we were literally
Speaker 1: part of this community at products of it and then
Speaker 1: later able to look back on it. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think we write about it and other people do too,
Speaker 1: because the city is endlessly fascinating, that the history and
Speaker 1: the present is so frought with that history of you know,
Speaker 1: problematic stuff and interesting things, and it's alive in so
Speaker 1: many ways. I mean, I think about now that there's
Speaker 1: this John Bird's curriculum in the public schools, right, you
Speaker 1: want to tell them who John Burges, John Birds, the
Speaker 1: police officer who you know, was was part of a
Speaker 1: midnight crew and a station two hundred people. Yeah, tortured
Speaker 1: more than one hundred men black men into false confessions,
Speaker 1: and as part of reparations, the city agree to teach
Speaker 1: this curriculum. That's that's you know, I think, I think
Speaker 1: you know we we've talked about this before, even on
Speaker 1: the show when we're talking about critical race theory that
Speaker 1: I think both of us believe professionally and personally that
Speaker 1: you have to engage with the really messy and difficult
Speaker 1: history of a place and that is what is uh,
Speaker 1: you know it is you know you talked about on
Speaker 1: the bus in Chicago and hating the city. This is
Speaker 1: a tough city to love. Yeah, this is a city
Speaker 1: that hurts you, and to be in love with it
Speaker 1: is like being in an abusive relationship. Sometimes that's how
Speaker 1: I feel relationship with you. I hope not. I hope
Speaker 1: not like it's dysfunctional. Um, and you know it, it's
Speaker 1: it is all of the magnificent things. And it is
Speaker 1: the richness of the history which is so so to
Speaker 1: fraught with who we are as a country and as
Speaker 1: a city that that makes us an important place and
Speaker 1: a place to try to to make it better in
Speaker 1: some ways. Yeah, and I think it's fair to also
Speaker 1: think about some influences. So, um, we haven't talked about
Speaker 1: this on the show, but I think it's fair to say,
Speaker 1: like your brother, Jake, Jake Austen is here, basket and
Speaker 1: we all went to I school together. Jake is a
Speaker 1: couple of years older than us, but you know, we
Speaker 1: had we had that experience. We all went to Kinnwood,
Speaker 1: and your brother was in many ways a booster for
Speaker 1: the city, um, long before you and I were even
Speaker 1: thinking about these issues, um, both as a as a
Speaker 1: zine editor and being able to describe the music scene
Speaker 1: in the city, like I mean, I wouldn't pay that
Speaker 1: close attention, but enough attention to know that this is
Speaker 1: what Jake was doing. He began writing about the city.
Speaker 1: He literally has a TV show called chick A Go Go.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't be more of a booster than that.
Speaker 1: A theme song, yeah you want to sing it now,
Speaker 1: but if in the podcast version of it is yea
Speaker 1: and we'll lave it and it's fun. So so let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about a harder subject, which is you know,
Speaker 1: nobody really talks about Chicago now without talking about, say,
Speaker 1: the violence, right, And you know, you're either when you
Speaker 1: even talk about being a booster, you're sort of saying
Speaker 1: there's more to the city than that, but you're actually
Speaker 1: sort of responding to it or you're engaging with it,
Speaker 1: and it really is part of every conversation here, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to actually pick up on a theme because
Speaker 1: you've sort of already talked a little bit about this.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the work that I do as
Speaker 1: an academic is around policing. And at one point, you know,
Speaker 1: someone asked us we met someone earlier today, said you know,
Speaker 1: like what inspired you to do the show? And the
Speaker 1: short answer is that we had an opportunity through the Pushkin,
Speaker 1: which is a company co owned by Malcolm Gladwell, the
Speaker 1: journalist and writer, and Jacob Weisberg. But the idea of
Speaker 1: the show came because I was doing academic work on
Speaker 1: the criminal justice system I'd written about as a historian,
Speaker 1: and I was doing work with other social scientists around
Speaker 1: how to think about a different kind of policing. And
Speaker 1: Ben was actually reporting on policing in the early days
Speaker 1: of Black Lives Matter, sort of from the Michael Brown
Speaker 1: moment to the Lakwan McDonald moment, and was on the
Speaker 1: ground reporting around the city about various forms of activism
Speaker 1: and talking about the tough stuff. Like for us, it
Speaker 1: was not just the tough stuff and the questions about
Speaker 1: like what's wrong with your city, but it was also
Speaker 1: about trying to answer these tough questions and to think
Speaker 1: about like what's the future of the city, Like is
Speaker 1: this a moment for us in different capacities to talk
Speaker 1: through what it means to solve for these problems. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I know that as a Chicago writer, I
Speaker 1: am trying to push against the stereotypes of the city,
Speaker 1: you know, the shy rack image, or we have a
Speaker 1: there's a Republican running for governor now and he's been
Speaker 1: he's been really pushing this idea of the Chicago as
Speaker 1: hellhole of sort of adopting the language American carnage. This
Speaker 1: is a very adopting the Trump language to sort of
Speaker 1: you know, it's you know, it's also fear of crime
Speaker 1: in Chicago and bail reform. But it's like it's an
Speaker 1: easy dog whistle and it's probably even more explicit than
Speaker 1: dog whistle um to rile up people. Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: I did a reporting uh project once not too long ago,
Speaker 1: where I went around to twenty high schools in the
Speaker 1: city and my idea was I would interview and profile
Speaker 1: all the valedictorians of all these different high schools that
Speaker 1: that that there is much representative of the city and
Speaker 1: children in the city and then the public school system
Speaker 1: as either victims or perpetrators of violence. Right, and you know,
Speaker 1: in some ways much much more representative of you know,
Speaker 1: most students. Yeah, and you know that was that was
Speaker 1: the thing. It was amazing thing to even just like
Speaker 1: to be inside twenty different high schools across the city.
Speaker 1: So I take a much shorter version of like how
Speaker 1: to defend against the negative stereotypes, and that is I
Speaker 1: just tell people, Chicago's the greatest beach town on Earth.
Speaker 1: Each town where where where else can you have access
Speaker 1: to this amazing lake, like at just a crossing a bridge,
Speaker 1: It's amazing. So yes, that that's the simple version. But
Speaker 1: here we are, right, and here we are. M I
Speaker 1: got here on Friday and on the hour and a
Speaker 1: half drive, which was about as long as it took
Speaker 1: to fly here from the East Coast two Hyde Park.
Speaker 1: WBZ was reporting on the killing of a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old blocks away from our high school. He was out
Speaker 1: at lunch at a high school, stated high school student,
Speaker 1: middle of the day at twelve thirty five. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: also was killed in a parking lot on East End,
Speaker 1: which is the very parking lot I crossed for ten
Speaker 1: years of my life to leave my apartment building to
Speaker 1: come to high school, to go anywhere else from Hi. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I've been thinking about this a lot of
Speaker 1: just this young man. I think he just transferred to
Speaker 1: the school this year, and that this beautiful start to
Speaker 1: the school year. I've been walking around the neighborhood and
Speaker 1: seeing Kenwood students out and about playing football and practicing
Speaker 1: band and lacrosse, and just like just so energetic and
Speaker 1: to think to think this his life is over. And
Speaker 1: you know, as much as I'm saying of pushing against
Speaker 1: the stereotype and writing about other things, this is a fact, right.
Speaker 1: It happened, right, and and the reverberations are real. People
Speaker 1: make choices at that point to leave the city, to
Speaker 1: not send their kids to Kenwood High School to get away.
Speaker 1: You know, why would I if that's where danger is.
Speaker 1: And and then there's all the sort of like political
Speaker 1: things that happen, you know, in this case, the school
Speaker 1: board accusing Lori Lightfoot of not keeping children safe, of
Speaker 1: you know, asking for more policing, all these other things
Speaker 1: that we know intellectually, like there's no police officer that
Speaker 1: can stop that crime. You can respond to it in
Speaker 1: some way, and then you can say like maybe they could,
Speaker 1: you know, hunt these people down, but that's it's not
Speaker 1: a policing issue, but something something happened that that is
Speaker 1: both real and undeniable and and really tears at the
Speaker 1: fabric of our community. Yeah, yeah, Ben, Ben and I
Speaker 1: have been talking a lot about the depopulation of the city,
Speaker 1: um and and Ben's been doing some writing about it.
Speaker 1: Uh more generally. Uh, it's personal. I mean I think
Speaker 1: that's the point. It's personal. It's not just it's not
Speaker 1: just our neighborhood, and it's not just the people who
Speaker 1: are one degree removed. As you know, a year ago
Speaker 1: there were a series of of just outrageous shootings in
Speaker 1: Hyde Park that we actually talked about in one of
Speaker 1: our episodes. And so here we are again. Many of
Speaker 1: you know, My mom left the city after having purchased
Speaker 1: a handgun for personal protection and told me, you know
Speaker 1: that her her handgun was on its way, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about. It's like she's in her
Speaker 1: apartment on the citizen app and as far as she's concerned,
Speaker 1: they're coming for her eventually. She's got a shaky hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's got yeah, this is not good. But I think
Speaker 1: you know, so now she's with us, but I think
Speaker 1: I think we don't want that, right. So the challenge
Speaker 1: for us as people who do get to speak on
Speaker 1: behalf of the city, whether whether we get it right
Speaker 1: or wrong in terms of how we describe Chicago, the
Speaker 1: challenge for us is to simultaneously be honest about what
Speaker 1: these existential realities mean for people who live their lives
Speaker 1: here every day and simultaneously push back against the bad
Speaker 1: ideas that push us towards a past that is not
Speaker 1: the source of the solution in this case. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So when Ben talks about policing won't save us, like,
Speaker 1: we do have to remember that in any instance police
Speaker 1: are reactive to violence. They actually you know, unless we
Speaker 1: could imagine a future where their checkpoints on every corner,
Speaker 1: which did come up in some of the conversation about
Speaker 1: what happened at the University of Chicago last year or
Speaker 1: in the fifty Thursday there. But as we know, that's
Speaker 1: not going to happen, and it shouldn't happen. So we
Speaker 1: have to think about what do we want in terms
Speaker 1: of an infrastructure that is healthier, that is safer, that
Speaker 1: is more about economic security for people, and not to
Speaker 1: say that those guys who killed this guy needed more
Speaker 1: money in their pockets and it wouldn't have happened. But
Speaker 1: what we're really talking about is a kind of society
Speaker 1: we live and where guns are ubiquitous, poverty is growing,
Speaker 1: and therefore the combination of people feeling like they're at
Speaker 1: the short end of a stick and they're all operating
Speaker 1: on short fuses. It's something we can do something about. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's not. On the other hand, but
Speaker 1: in moments like this, we also have to recognize that
Speaker 1: there is some immediate need, that people are hurting and
Speaker 1: they're full of fear and they need something, and then
Speaker 1: in the void of good ideas, they'll be sort of
Speaker 1: these these these old ideas that have been tried already
Speaker 1: and we know don't work right um, and but that
Speaker 1: there really is trauma they're suffering right right now, and
Speaker 1: there's there's there's something you know, devastating and and I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, another neighborhood. To many places, you know it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's it's why you know, it
Speaker 1: happens a lot, But when it's very close to home,
Speaker 1: you see it up close. Yeah, you have to recognize that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's leave folks with three good ideas or about
Speaker 1: the future. Right, So three good ideas. One, we really
Speaker 1: do have to make sure that we give young people
Speaker 1: summer youth employment and massive recreational opportunities. Both of us
Speaker 1: had them really important because we know, I'll just use
Speaker 1: the social science research tells us that kids who actually
Speaker 1: get to work at fourteen put money in their pocket.
Speaker 1: Kids who they're no barrier to the recreational opportunities they
Speaker 1: want or the ways to explore their own creative expression
Speaker 1: do much better than kids who essentially have a lot
Speaker 1: of free time. Two, we want to make sure that
Speaker 1: we invest in violence interruption. Yeah, Chicago is really one
Speaker 1: of the birthplaces for this idea, but Chicago has been
Speaker 1: one of the hardest places for violence interruption to take root.
Speaker 1: It is being exported to Jacksonville, Ball to more. New
Speaker 1: York is one of the places with the most significant
Speaker 1: investment in violence interruption. And so one of the things
Speaker 1: that we know we don't know, we still haven't learned
Speaker 1: exactly what set this off. But violence interrupters get ahead
Speaker 1: of it. They actually do the work that police can't do,
Speaker 1: which is that they have trust within those communities talk
Speaker 1: people off the ledge so that they're not inclined to
Speaker 1: use violence. Because, as public health experts day, violence is
Speaker 1: a disease and it is contagious and once you catch it,
Speaker 1: you're much more likely to express it. So those two
Speaker 1: ideas about investing in our young people as well as
Speaker 1: investing in actual things that work to keep people from
Speaker 1: killing people, to me, are very productive and it's no
Speaker 1: reason why Chicago can't invest in those rather than continuing
Speaker 1: to have a conversation in this next mayoral race about
Speaker 1: how much policing, how much more policing. Yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: reminding ourselves. I was talking about the governor's race when
Speaker 1: when the Republican candidate called Chicago a hellhold, there was
Speaker 1: an online sort of social media response of you know,
Speaker 1: post something about Chicago that it's you know, conflicts with
Speaker 1: that that shows it's beauty and don't just show the
Speaker 1: skyline and you know, this is a place full of
Speaker 1: love and this is a place full of beauty, and
Speaker 1: those things are not erased. They're they're side by side
Speaker 1: with a lot of the problems, but they're they're they're
Speaker 1: not they're not. They're not gone. They're always here too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, we usually sign off the show in
Speaker 1: the way that most people know, and I think we're
Speaker 1: going to do the same. But I want to add
Speaker 1: to that that not only that love you, man, but
Speaker 1: I love this city. I love you, and I love
Speaker 1: this city too. All Right. Some of My Best Friends
Speaker 1: Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is
Speaker 1: written and hosted by Khalil Jibron Muhammad and my best
Speaker 1: friend Ben Austin. It's produced by John Asante and Lucy Sullivan.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Jasmine Morris, our engineer is Amanda k Wan,
Speaker 1: and our executive producer is Mia Lobell. At Pushkin thanks
Speaker 1: to Leita Mulad, Julia Martin, Heather Faine, Carly Migliori, John Schnars,
Speaker 1: Gretta Kone, and Jacob Weisberg. Our theme song, Little Lily,
Speaker 1: is by fellow Chicagoan the brilliant Avery R. Young, from
Speaker 1: his album Tubman. You definitely want to check out his
Speaker 1: music at his website Avery R. Young dot com. You
Speaker 1: can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin Pods,
Speaker 1: and you can sign up for our newsletter at Pushkin
Speaker 1: dot Fm. To find more Pushkin Podcast, listen on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.
Speaker 1: And if you like our show, please give us a
Speaker 1: five star rating and a review and listen. Even if
Speaker 1: you don't like it, give it a five star rating
Speaker 1: and a review, and please tell all of your best
Speaker 1: friends about it. Thank you. On this episode, we have
Speaker 1: to give us special thanks to the Chicago Humanities Festival
Speaker 1: for bringing us together and letting us speak at their
Speaker 1: amazing event. That's right, and we also need to thank
Speaker 1: Jake Austin, your brother, my brother, and the Goblins were
Speaker 1: letting us use their music on this episode. Man, you
Speaker 1: can watch Chicago go online, look it up on YouTube
Speaker 1: and you know, definitely listen to the music and Chicago go. Wait. Wait,
Speaker 1: So on the show that we recorded in Chicago, you
Speaker 1: said that your great grandfather and your great grandmother couldn't
Speaker 1: get married in the South. Yeah, man, how come they
Speaker 1: couldn't get married? Well, what I forgot to say is
Speaker 1: that my great grandfather was basically a white dude and
Speaker 1: basically makes it Wait when you say, when you say basics,
Speaker 1: what is basically a white through man? How well he
Speaker 1: he looked white? He was white presenting, and his siblings
Speaker 1: passed as white, so basically his whole family considered themselves white. Dude,
Speaker 1: you you are talking about like running for office in
Speaker 1: Chicago or in Illinois, and you could pull this Barack
Speaker 1: Obama shit of being like my my great white great grandfather.
Speaker 1: Like you gotta use that. You gotta use that. You can't.
Speaker 1: You gotta like put that forward, like that is power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you gotta you could have like only in America
Speaker 1: can the great grandson of a white dude from Mississippi,
Speaker 1: my white great growndfather and my