Maricela Hernandez

Maricela Hernandez is a mother of one. She a outgoing lady. She was born in Tamulipas. When she was 18 her family moved to Mexico City where she studied to become a secretary but she always wanted to be a teacher. Maricela is one of many heroes in our community. Maricela used to work at Kelvyn Park High School with students and parents. Maricela loves helping people in our community. Something that she told us and others is that “ we should stay in school and learn how much we could because out there is another  world with so many things”

Maricela has been working with Logan Square Neighborhood Association for 7 years now. She stared by volunteering at LSNA. She was a parent mentor at KP for a couple of years. She works with students and parents. She visits those students with bad attendance and they will try to solve their problems. While Maricela was working with LSNA volunteering, she went to marches and had great experiences.

Maricela had so many experiences working with LSNA. Something that she liked the most was she helped the people around her. Like once she had a experience with a young lady that had dropped out. They got the students going back to school after a month or so she had a great attendance. Something that Maricela tells the students is, “Tell all the teenagers to stay in school because with an education you can get wherever you want to go and become whatever you want to in the future after high school.” Something that LSNA does is that they have a day that they go out and clean the neighborhood. Maricela likes the changes they did in the community. She loves helping others.

          Maricela’s ideas about the injustices in our community are that some schools don't have a lot of programs, extracurricular activities, the violence and danger and there isn't enough funding for the schools. The dangers that the students face are the dangers of the different gangs in the neighborhood. Some kids can't even walk home without being harassed by them. Those are some of the main concerns of the people and the parents in our community, and even some of the fellow students.

Maricela defines a hero is someone who’s always there for you when you need them without asking something back. Her heroes are her mom and her daughter for the fact that she loves them a lot. Her mom inspires her a lot because she has always been there for her since the day she was born her mom showed her how to be helpful and to always follow her dreams.

Something that Maricela Hernandez made me see was that she has such a sweetheart for kids, teenagers, and parents who need help and that she’s a lovely lady and hard worker because she doesn't only help students but the community. Something that I saw was the community needs heroes and organizations like LSNA to make big changes in the community. The reason that I believe that Maricela Hernandez is a great hero its cause she works in differents things and she always there to give you a hand if you need it.

      

Caleb Jennings

                                                         

               

                Caleb Jennings is a union organizer that works with people that want to

change working conditions and unfair wage payments. He enjoys working with workers to improve wages and any other issues that they have. By organizing protests, it makes it possible for him to get more people involved. He values the lives of many hard-working people who don’t get paid as they should, and aren’t being paid equally. He has been working as a union organizer now for 13 years, and has seen many changes in the communities and workers he’s helped.

                 In high school he wasn’t as civically engaged as he is now, but during

his time when he got his education at UIC he was more interested in workers that were struggling. He attended a organizing institute, which helped him learn how to become a union organizer, mostly what he knows today he was taught there. Since he joined the institute he never stopped participating in the organization. He stated that, “If people want to change the way they work.. they have to be civically engaged.” He also thinks that students could also be civically engaged, to focus on what is going on in their community, and participate in organizations.

                A person that Caleb found inspiring was a woman named Sonia Acuna.

She has 3 children that she takes care of on her own. She inspired Caleb by showing that anything was possible even during the hard times. During a protest that Caleb organized, he met her because she wanted to be a part of the protest. She had told him that she worked two shifts in two different Mcdonalds, while taking care of her children. It inspired him because she was willing to quit her job and sacrifice not getting paid, in order to protest having better working conditions.

               Other work that he’s done in the community was with people and organ-

izations collaborating together. One such project involved students to create posters for a protest. A recent protest that he organized, was shown on television, and it encouraged people to participate in his organization. He tries to get as many people involved in protests that he does, especially the working class. A new project that he’s working on is called the “Fight for 15,” which is to have minimum wage to be raised to $15 an hour rather than $8 an hour.

                To him social justice is when there’s something wrong and people come

together to speak out against it. Some of the examples he used were about people that aren’t able to protest in other countries because they would be killed. An injustice that he thinks is important is income inequality, where people aren’t being paid equally, between the rich and the poor. He has accomplished to have more benefits and healthcare for workers he protested with, which they never had before. He stated that “as individuals we are weak.. but when we pull people together, you have power in numbers”.

By : Andres Solano

Lily Diaz

Liliana Diaz works with youth. She wants to make a difference not only for the community, but even for her daughter. She loves doing what she does. Liliana is helpful, hard working and proud because of the fact that she wants to make a difference in the world and see if anything could be changed.

        Liliana does a lot of things of with youth. She does something that can help people when they are dealing with bullies and also she works with all of students that are in the neighborhood or even KP. She does a lot that involves immigration work or even with school. This really helps a lot because if there is some people that need help with something, she and the people that she works with can really do a lot for all the people that need so much help. There is a lot of other jobs like working with children but you can choose what you would like to do. They don’t do it for the money, but they do it because they feel that it’s wrong. She likes to work with teenagers for the fact that she could talk to them in an early age about what is going on and tell them that they should start doing stuff in their community and it will really change.

      Liliana goes with the students in the youth leadership program and goes to the congressman to talk about what they think needs to be changed in communities or just everything in general because there is a lot of things that are wrong. The protesters were protesting about immigration they were saying nasty things like that they should close the border. Liliana and her group had confronted protesters that were against immigration and we're talking very negative about it. The protesters were saying that they need to take their families and go back from where they came from. They were saying very racist things to Liliana and her group and were even recording them and Liliana doesn't even know why they were in the first place. She had said, “that they were just putting more wood into the fire.”

          She thinks that CPS doesn't really care what other people want or what they can do to make all the neighborhoods better or it could even be the schools. CPS wants to close schools that little kids go to and now they're going to have to go farther just because of what CPS had chose to do and its not even the students fault they just want more money. Liliana doesn’t like the fact that schools look at GPA. She thinks it shouldn’t even be important and you should let a kid in no matter what it is at least they try their best to do good and CPS doesn’t really appreciate much.

      Liliana thinks that a hero is a person that cares and takes care of their family even if they're the only parent figure in the house. They would just do a great job doing all that work and making sure that there are kids doing good. Her mom was like the only one that took care of her and her siblings when their dad wasn’t really in the picture but her mom did everything she could and try to buy them things when she could. It was hard for her but she was doing the best that she can do.

       What I learned from Liliana is that she is really great person, and she does care about the world and what happens in it. She really wants to make a huge change and that’s awesome. I learned so much from her and know that if she keeps doing what she has been doing since the start, people will open their eyes and listen. They will know that they should do the same. She makes me want to stand up and do something about all of this that has been going on. If I had another chance to interview her again it would be great. I would love to hear more information about what she has been doing since the last time I met her. It’s good to know that someone cares about the changes that could be done.

Stacy Erenberg

Stacy Erenberg is one of the many people working to make the Logan Square area a better, healthier, more just place to live and work. She plays two minute shows, works with the Sage Community Health Collective and sliding scale acupuncture bodywork clinic. Stacy also does Chinese massage, she was raised into a buddhist religion, and she lives a biracial life.

Stacy works as a massage therapist using Chinese massage. Stacy works with chi; chi is a form of energy that runs through your body. Chi is life force and energy. “Chi flows through us. It flows in different pathways throughout the body and every pathway has a different direction. Every pathway has a different patterns in balance, that are sort of a particular in that way and every person.” Stacy had gone to a college called Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in Chicago. In college Stacy had met her two business partners, which do the acupuncture. Stacy has been doing acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine to cure her terrible allergies. Now that Stacy is doing that she feels that she has more energy. Stacy sees Western medicine as a life saving medicine because its mainly for surgeries and other medical reasoning.

Stacy live in a biracial life she is black, Russian and Romanian. Her mother is black, and Stacy was raised in Chicago. Stacy ancestors on her mother's side came from New Orleans around the nineteenth to twentieth century. Most blacks that are in Chicago are from the south around the twentieth century. Her father is white but her father’s ancestors are Russian and Romanian Jews. They had came over from Russia and Romania around the same time as her mother's ancestors came from the South to Chicago. Her father's ancestors came by boat as immigrants before eastern European Jews were considered to be white.

Stacey was raised Buddhist. Her parents met through this Buddhist organization. Stacy’s father was very involved. Her father was the religious leader. Then her mother and father had left the organization because they had gotten really disillusioned. Stacy was raised doing Buddhist practices. She believes that she had sort of “inherited the way she see the world.” Stacy does her own Buddhist practices but not within the organized group.

Stacy does two minute shows. Her father is actually playing in one of them in the live band as the drummer. Stacy is a singer in the play, so she is singing poetry. The story is about a biracial person who is Jewish. Stacy had wrote the two minute show with a friend of her’s. From going to several colleges, learning the way of Chinese medicine, creating her own schedule in her way in the business world, Stacy seems to be doing just fine. She doesn’t seem to be so chaotic or pressurized. Stacy is really relaxed and has a great sense of humor. From my point of view, Stacy is very funny, laid back, and knows what to do or how to deal with certain situations.

Emlyn Rickets? She works at the Chicago Police Department. Emlyn is currently working at an organization named FDLA, in which they run a 24 hour police custody hotline. She also is a part of The Street Law Program, which she goes to different schools, and teaches students about their legal rights.

She is a well respected attorney in Chicago that came from Loyola and would like to become well known for what she does in her near future.Her family has been a huge part of her life while yearning to be a lawyer. Her parents have always influenced her to do her best and try to succeed in everything she does. Her mother is a teacher in the suburbs of Chicago. Her father works at a restaurant. She said, “My mother and father have always been my heroes ever since I was a young girl, they are hardworking and made sure I was successful in life.” Emlyn’s family has always been there for her, through thick and thin. She mentions her family quite a bunch because they encouraged her to fulfill her dreams, and to stop crime in the CIty of Chicago.

Emlyn’s ideas on gang violence and segregating children from their background and where they come from are very strong. She wants to stop all of the negative activity happening in and around Chicago. She lives to help people, which makes me have a great liking towards her. She also thinks everyone deserves to be equal, go to school, and be successful in life no matter where they come from. School closings in her opinion are a very difficult thing for the youth of Chicago; she also believes students should have the right to attend their neighborhood schools because ONCE again there is a lot of violence happening and people die everyday over just wearing the wrong colors. She has a great point in expressing herself in helping to stop the closings and keep grammar school kids in their destined school.

Heroes? Her parents are a huge part of her life and were when she was a young girl. Emlyn described her parents as “hardworking and loving.” Now? Then? Her heroes will always be her parents. Her views on heroes are people who put anyone before themselves and random citizens who do things on their own time and love helping out no matter what the situation is. Heroes can be anyone you want them to be! Your parents, an action hero, ANYONE. Role models are heroes as well in their own way. Emlyn chose her parents because they have always been there for her, helped her be successful, and encouraged her to be what she is today, which is an attorney of Chicago.

Personally? Emlyn is a great person and can achieve higher goals with much more time to go. Talking to her made me realize there ARE people in the world who DO care, and love to help out the youth of Chicago. Being a lawyer is a big responsibility. You gain enemies, you lose friends, you gain friends. It’s all a win-lose situation.

Elizabeth “Libby” Frank is one of the many community heroes working for a better change in the community. Libby grew up in a segregated area called Terithe, Indiana. She was not too fond of high school life. To her it wasn’t so exciting because her school only had the basic core classes and nothing more. She enjoys gardening, reading and sewing. She hopes one day to learn Spanish. She would like to be fluent in Spanish.

LIbby has a way of putting people together. She believes the more people know their neighbors, the better the community will get. She has been volunteering for about 7 or 8 years now. She has done peace work in the community and planted many gardens that brought the community together. She also works with the LSNA. Libby has many successes especially with planting gardens.

Libby has planted many gardens throughout the neighborhood. The programs she has with the gardens are very successful. Another success of Libby’s is having a required military form in a summer packet for her child’s school. Before the school did not give the option to the parents of the students to give the military their child’s information. Libby saw this as an injustice and worked hard to change this so that the parent’s could get this option.

Through Libby’s eyes she sees many injustices facing our community. One injustice includes Kelvyn Parks’s student to counselor ratio. She believes that there should be way more counselors so that a student will always have access to a counselor. Libby wishes the resources we have in the school were better. She also does not prefer to have standardized testing. She hopes that one day there will be no more because “CPS has gone overboard” with the testing. “I think its something you guys should be volunteering for, not something you have to do,” said Libby talking about her views of the program JROTC. Libby would love to change all this but the only person that could do this all is a true hero.

We asked Libby what she thought a true hero includes. She said, “Someone who puts their cause above themselves. Someone who goes beyond the call of duty.” She thinks heroes should be someone who is helpful and dedicated to their work. She thinks true heroes should have great characteristics. To me Libby is all of those things.

I believe that Libby has done some incredible work throughout the neighborhood. To me she is a true hero doing the work she does. One day I hope to plant alongside Libby. She is dedicated to her work and community. I hope one day she is recognized throughout our city as a community hero because that is what she truly is.

Tami Love

A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to interview someone who is very important in our community. Her name is Tami Love. She’s the mother of three kids and whenever she isn’t working, she enjoys being with her family. She went to college as well. Like most kids, she didn’t really like to attend school. But she knew she needed to go further. She put all her studying and work in night school. She met a lot of friends who were just like her. She started working on Housing Issues in the Logan Square Community.

Tami Love works on housing and education at the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. She helps residents keep the community affordable. She is working with this community to try to make them keep our community affordable with low income. She also helps organize the community and neighbors. She tries to keep neighbors involved with activities. While Tami is working in the community, she has faced some situations within our neighborhood.

As Tami worked in the community, she has seen some things that she felt were unfair. She said, “Anytime there's a problem, the first thing they do is call the police and have everybody arrested. We have the police being called on kindergarteners and getting kicked out.” She believes there is a way to deal with our conflicts within our community. There are programs where they deal with situations in our neighborhoods. She mentions that she likes Peace Circles because it's a good way for people to talk it out. People including adults who are not familiar with social justice need to become more educated on what it is for. On the other hand, Ms. Love has seen some changes while working in our neighborhood.

   Tami has seen people try to learn more than one language or learn about a different culture. She also mentions that she has seen people get stronger and more powerful. She said, “I don't think it's always been been that way. I think that our organization in particular has been pushing people into that direction.” She believes that us students have the courage to change something in our school if we see that something is not right. She sees potential in us. She thinks people have learned about their civil rights and about their civic duties and what they are. As we talked about the changes in life, we decided to ask her about her views on a hero.

   She believes a hero is a person that is not outfront that stays in the background and is willing to put themselves on the line if things were  dangerous. As a kid, she looked up to her brother because he was the oldest and took her for rides. Someone who's her hero was and still is her mom. She went through tough times, but she made it through raising all her six children. Her mom is always there whenever she is having a bad day, that's why she's her hero. She believes anybody can be a hero, as long as they speak well and are not flashy and fancy.

    Ms. Love is a very hard working person who I have looked up to after interviewing her. She is willing to make the world a better place for everybody that way people could have a shelter and not worry about a thing. She is a woman with a big heart who just wants the best for everybody in this world. She is a true hero.