Struggling to Grow at Altgeld Gardens, Chicago

The nasal voice of the goofy man with thick glasses and a Tuskeegee airman shirt was touting the dangers of environmental hazards to the only five kids in school on a Saturday. For a Saturday class, they were pretty decently behaved. Granted, Diamond looked bored and shrugged her shoulders when questions were asked and Maqueze, a whale at twelve years old, was probably thinking about lunch. Alisha, however, and the sweet-faced brothers Charlie and Malcolm, were doing their best to come up with the answers that their instructor was fishing for.

It wasn’t the type of scene that you would guess would evoke grim fascination or a weighty sense of dramatic irony in any bystander.

That is until the assistant teacher piped up from the side of the room something the students may or may not have known.

“Did y’all know that you have one of the highest rates of PCB’s in Cook County?” he asked. “You know that lot over there by the closed General Foods? They left a bunch of transformers there for years. The chemicals in it leaked into the ground. Kids used to play there until they started coming to school with their hair falling out and somebody finally got it tested. Levels out the roof. Right here in Cook county.”

A few minutes later, on the subject of air pollution, the helpful assistant mentioned the nearby factory and the fumes fill the air the students breathe. And following that, in a discussion of how burning waste produces toxic ash, the assistant discussed the nearby dump, which still burns methane each night.

The lesson was taking place in the decrepit high school in the Chicago housing projects located in the far Southside of Chicago. The projects, so long established they are considered a historic landmark, lie so far South that it took me two hours to travel on public transit there. Needing to travel for an hour just to reach the nearest Red line stop, the residents are cut off from grocery stores, drug stores and any economic opportunity the city might have to offer. There’s no jobs here, just a boarded up store, a library with the doors locked and several charities located in isolated buildings with torn blue awnings.

The name of the projects evokes a kind of irony—Altgeld Gardens. For the three to four thousand residents crammed into several blocks of public housing , it’s less like gardens and more like a forgotten hell on earth. The warnings the assistant teacher gave were no joke. On one side of the high school and elementary school are blocks and blocks of shiny, new projects. On the other side, the brick buildings are closed—haunting rows, their windows like eyes with patches over them.

“They closed because people got sick,” our tour guide told us when I first drove through the projects. He spoke of  people getting cancer and mysterious illnesses. Children are born without genitals, a little boy goes blind after playing in the grass. Residents complain of the drifting stench from the landfills, nauseating on a warm summer’s day.

I couldn’t face being a voyeur on the situation. Sitting in that van, I vowed to go back. I wanted to see what life was really like in the projects. I wanted to meet the people scraping out life in impossible circumstances.

I signed up to tutor the kids at Carver High in French and on a Saturday morning, in I walked on this lesson.

The kids were now trying on gloves and masks. There were giggles from some, and from all when Maqueze couldn’t get his mask to stay firm over his double chin.

Charlie had his pushed up like a crown, then flipped it down and to the side like a baseball hat. When he walked out of the room to the bathroom, he strutted like a king.

I smiled with the kids, laughed with them, and put on my own gloves and mask at their urging. I looked at these sweet-faced kids and wondered how these flowers could grow in such a toxic place. Those who should have been caretakers and gardeners—the government, social services, the privileged, you, me—had mistaken these bright little seedlings for weeds, lacing their home with chemicals and for the most part, abandoning them in a garden without water or sunlight.

Trapped in Hell's Garden

Southside Tour. Saturday, June 13, 2009.

We drove back up Dan Ryan highway and I cried. I didn’t want anyone to see me, but I felt angry, nauseous. We had just visited Altgeld Gardens—less like gardens and more like hell on earth, these public housing projects fester in isolation, miles from any sign of humanity.

The projects are located off of 130^th street, a street that juts out from one of the busiest highway in the nation. Cars zip by, in and out of the city, the people inside oblivious to the hell that is these people’s reality. We drove, passing gentleman’s clubs and megachurches. and listened to Arvis talking about the methane that still burns in the nearby dump each night, forty years after the dump shut down, sending poisonous fumes to the Gardens.

We turned off into an area of fields. We pull in and see a boarded up store. Then, we see homes. All along the east side, the brick buildings are closed—haunting rows, their windows like eyes with patches over them.

“They closed because people got sick,” Arvis says.

The projects are toxic—people get cancer and mysterious illnesses. Children are born without genitals, a little boy goes blind after playing in the grass.

The few buildings on the east side that are open have broken blue and white awnings and signs. They are charity centers—there are no stores in Altgeld.

We pass family services, Catholic charities. And then we see an elementary school. We see new houses.

A shiny new school? New, red brick houses?

Arvis says it before I can notice it for myself, but they closed the toxic homes and built new homes literally feet away. If that ground is toxic, how the hell is that ground not toxic?

Beyond that are more projects, rows and rows of new buildings, custom made. Two shiny, new Laundromats sit at the corner. There are lots of little playgrounds, yet all are void are children. It is sickening. I stare in awe at one some politician thought was a good idea—revamp the projects. Build them new homes. No one seems to notice that it’s the location that is toxic—not just because of the horrible chemicals but because of the location. Three to four thousand people are trapped here in an impossibly small amount of space. One bus arrives every day. There are no jobs, no hope, no escape. Nothing.

Arvis points to police cameras on every street corner—installed to watch for drug deals. So the people there are ignored—except when they are caught doing something illegal. I can’t believe it.

Later, someone, blinded by the new buildings, commented that the projects weren’t that bad.

They were the worst place I have ever seen in my entire life.

One hope: This is where Obama did his mission work. I have hope in the fact that we have a president who worked there.