CiC SG Chicago Excursion

Last weekend, January 26-28, the Community Information Corps Student Group embarked on a trip to work with Ann Bishop, Associate Professor with GSLIS at the University of Illinois, and the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC) in the Paseo Boricua neighborhood of Chicago. This trip can be considered nothing less than an overwhelming success, with many important connections established between the two Community Informatics programs. We departed Friday evening from Ann Arbor and arrived in Chicago late that night. We had a small bit of difficulty locating the hostel associated with PRCC. Fortunately, we received help from two different sources that signaled things to come. First, a restaurant adjoining the PRCC generously offered to keep their doors open for 14 hungry, tired graduate students. In what was a recurring theme throughout the weekend, the Paseo Boricua neighborhood is incredibly closely knit, and the mangers of the restaurant decided to accommodate those willing to help the PRCC and the greater Puerto Rican community. The second source of help came from Matt Rodriguez, Vice Principal at Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS). Matt stopped his housekeeping duties at the PRCC (at midnight no less) to let those of us charged with locating the hostel in from the cold. He immediately got on the phone and put us in touch with Ann Bishop. He even took the extra step of walking us to the hostel, even though he did not need to do so. We met briefly with Ann Bishop and then took our leave for the evening. The next morning we met for breakfast with Ann at Nellie’s, a restaurant with strong ties to the PRCC. Here we introduced ourselves and got to learn a bit more about UIUC's involvement in Paseo Boricua. We were especially interested as to why Paseo Boricua was chosen as the site for action. Ann listed a few reasons: energy flowed out of the community; the ethos/values of both UIUC and Paseo Boricua meshed; "community is the curriculum"; and the fact that the PRCC was open to collaboration. Ann then proceeded to explain that community projects were not the only avenues of involvement. Specifically, she mentioned technology development as one possible avenue. She wondered how each of the unique strengths of the different iSchools could be identified and made part of a network of collaboration, and how we could tailor such a network to the different interests and levels of involvement different groups of people (faculty, students, etc.) would have. We then discussed how UM might be able to collaborate with UIUC's project in Paseo Boricua. Ann thought that distance involvement may be possible, especially in the technology development field (developing a portfolio system for the PACHS student projects). Another resource that Ann identified was the Journal of Community Informatics. There could be opportunities for UM students to get involved with editing and manuscript submission. We took a short break and then walked to the Cordero Library & Information Center to sit-in on Ann's CI seminar. Here we met with students from UIUC’s graduate program and heard from Matt Rodriguez and Alejandro Molina, overseer of publicity and technology implementation. They spoke of the hopes and concerns that the PRCC (and the greater Paseo Boricua neighborhood) had as we encounter new, more difficult challenges. “Live and help to live,” was the ethos of the PRCC, especially in the context of gentrification, a topic of considerable concern for the community. Matt spoke of community ownership and how the last remaining Puerto Rican community in Chicago struggles against the pushes of “development” and economic entrepreneurs. He explicitly stated a space is needed where cultures can challenge themselves and take control of their leadership. As evidence of this, he noted that PACHS’ faculty and staff is 99% Puerto Rican. Next, we heard from Alejandro. He reinforced what Matt had said and expanded on this theme by discussing the library, which was created to reinforce these community bonds and connections. He again mentioned that Paseo Boricua was besieged by “violent gentrification” and stressed the need for three ideals to be reached to prevent a loss of community: self-determinism, self-sufficiency, and self-actualization. Planning was a good way to reach these ideals, and posed the question of how you interact not just with the students, but also with the families. He noted that not all learning is done in the classroom and referenced the concept of “social capital”. He believed that even if you don’t have financial resources, there are other social resources available to the neighborhood. Before we began with the CI seminar, José López, Executive Director of the PRCC, spoke with us briefly, touching generally on the topic Matt and Alejandro had addressed. He expanded the concept of gentrification, saying it was a process of re-colonization, capitalizing on the poor and marginalized peoples’ lands. This removed not only a people, but also a culture and community and felt that the US government views these ghettoes as “blights”. At this point, we broke into smaller groups to either take a quick tour of the community with Alejandro, or to work with Matt canvassing the community as part of their Participatory Democracy campaign, which included spoke to both the mundane (garbage collection) to the vital (community involvement and concerns of marginalization). A few students (myself included) stayed behind to work with Ann and her students with the idea to discuss options for collaboration between our two programs. While we didn’t’ address specific options, the important thing we pulled from the roundtable were ideas on how to attract students to CI without a large budget or profile. Ann said that this really was a “chicken and egg” conundrum, but there were small steps that could be taken to move in the right direction. Some ideas that had proven fruitful for UIUC CI were posting news items on the GSLIS homepage, recruiting in the Paseo Boricua neighborhood, the inclusion of letters in admissions packets, and an alumni newsletter. At this point, Ann’s class reconvened and they spent the rest of the time discussing their own projects and goals for the semester. It seemed they had developed a broad range of CI projects that drew from different areas of CI (technology dev., community interaction, etc.). The UM students took a back seat during this part of the trip to observe how the UIUC staff and students approached the practical problems and projects. After a short break, we commenced in earnest on the project Ann had set out for us: relocating and reshelving the books the library had in its possession. In total, we spent five hours working on the project, but those were hours well spent as we were able to reshelve the entire collection in our brief time working with the PRCC. Ann was incredibly grateful for our efforts. Link to Tim's Chicago Photos