Field Sites

My work in Chicago was spent in an interesting limbo between the Puerto Rican Cultural Center proper, and various educational institutions under the broad network of Chicago Public Schools (or CPS). Being that I was commissioned by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, an independent organization, to conduct research at the public CPS institutions, this gave me fascinating leeway and independence. I had no particular group to “report to” per se, as I was doing something that involved both 50%.

Community as a Campus, the very iniatiative I was assigned to study, is fascinating in itself, as it represents an agreement and commitment between public institutions and figures like schools and parks and politicians like Rahm Emanuel, nonprofits like the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, and individual people like the parents of children attending Humboldt Park public schools. This roughly translates to the sort of “set of organizations linked together as competitors and collaborators within a social space devoted to a particular type of action” mentioned in Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City.

I find the aspect of “competitors” fascinating, as Marcey Sorensen, the principal of CAAC’s lynchpin institution Roberto Clemente, was ousted from her position quickly after our interview. According to some people close to Clemente, this was due to a sense amongst CPS admins that Marcey was too invested in community organizations like the often controversial Puerto Rican Cultural Center. To me, this was particularly shocking, as Principal Sorensen had been instrumental in uplifting the historically flailing school to International Baccalaureate (I.B.) status.

It goes to show the interesting entanglements that occur when a relatively radical group like the Puerto Rican Cultural is so influential in local politics. Though I’m certain that Marcey’s engagement with the PRCC specifically isn’t the entirety of what got her ousted, but it did confirm my curiosity about the interesting alliances one would have to make to be successful at her job. In walking around the neighborhood, you will see a substantial amount of businesses with the PRCC logo on the awning. These convey a real, palpable presence in the neighborhood that demonstrate the need to win over the PRCC if you are trying to take up power in the community.

Given the fact that in the mid-90s, a scandal involving funding for Roberto Clemente led to the Chicago Sun Times running a story called “School funds used to push terrorist’s release” (the supposed terrorist being Puerto Rican freedom fighter Oscar Lopez Rivera), it seems painfully obvious that there is some visible tension between these intersecting interests. One of the reasons that I think CAAC is having some difficulty getting funding from the City of Chicago is this red tape.

I will say, it was somewhat counterintuitive to arrive in a struggling neighborhood such as Humboldt Park, Chicago as a 20-year old college student and be asked to make a presentation regarding gentrification to a bunch of seasoned school principals. Aside from the immediate fact that I am white and look like many of the gentrifiers moving into the neighborhood, I am also merely a pupil who would be explaining the adverse effects of gentrification to people who know the toll it has taken far better (and more intimately) than me.

Unfortunately (but understandably), the presentation never occurred. I still am in the process of creating a final project that may be Skyped into a meeting of teachers.