By Dorothy Tucker, Samah Assad, Carol Thompson
CHICAGO (CBS) – For more than 40 years, Ronald Macon has joined Auburn Gresham.
It is one of the other 47,000 people living on the net on the south side. At 11 a.m., every Tuesday, Macon, along with many other residents, heads to East 79th and Halsted to collect food and PPE, a distribution of the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation.
“I come here to participate in gathering here and meet other people, but more commonly to get the food they have here,” said Macon, who lives in a nearby nursing home. “It’s a very glorious thing they do in the community.”
Macon knows that his network is one of the most affected through COVID-19. The first death in the state occurred there, and since March, another 36 people have died, according to CBS 2’s investigation of data from cook county medical examiner.
“I’m very humble and very grateful to those other people here,” he said of the distribution volunteers. “With the pandemic, it’s the best grateful. It’s like a gift from heaven.”
The distribution is several times as a result of the efforts of the Chicago Rapid Response Team on Racial Equity. Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced the creation of the team in early April, which includes a partnership with network organizations such as Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation, Austin Coming Together and South Shore Works.
Specifically, the network’s leadership organization is guilty of proposing methods to curb the spread of COVID-19 and combating the disproportionate ones that have an effect on the pandemic in black and Latino communities.
In early April, CBS 2’s mapping and knowledge research revealed that Auburn Gresham, a predominantly black place, is one of five hot spots with maximum COVID-related deaths. Today, the numbers remain staggering: more than 1,000 of the 2,619 people who died, or 42%, are black.
But Carlos Nelson, an immediate reaction team member and CEO of Auburn Gresham’s largest Development Corporation, said he was not surprised by the devastating losses in his community. It is the result of decades of unequal systemic access to food and physical care in black and Latino communities, he said, however, it is still difficult to perceive reality.
“We knew that if something like this happened, we could be devastated, and that’s exactly what happened,” Nelson said. “This pandemic has given rise to its evil head and has highlighted many challenges, unfortunately, that we have faced for decades.”
Following the CBS 2 report, Lightfoot announced that Auburn Gresham, along with Austin and South Shore, would be in the middle of the immediate reaction team’s work. Today, the deaths are even higher than they were 4 months ago. The number of deaths at Auburn Gresham increased from six to 36. South Shore, which had seven deaths, is now 114. And the deaths in Austin, which were five, are now 20 times higher than in April. A total of 121 deaths occurred as of July 29.
You can explore COVID-19 deaths in black and Latino communities on the maps below by zooming in and clicking on a point or neighborhood. Click the arrow at the back of the map to move to a new map. You can also click the button in the most sensible way to get more data on the card.
So how does the team measure good fortune and growth? Through efforts such as food distribution, fed through the Greater Chicago Food Depot, to combat food deserts in marginalized communities. The distribution at 79th and Halsted is in the closed Save-A-Lot parking lot, a symbolism of hope in a network that wants more groceries, Nelson said.
Boxes of completely new products and meat line up in the batch, feeding another 1,200 people per week and another 1,000 people through a driving service behind the wheel.
Volunteers have distributed more than one million pounds of food to 14,500 families since March. The team also delivered about 4,000 foods to seniors. In addition, more than 125,000 masks were distributed to residents.
And recently, with development in the Latinx communities of Chicago, the Rapid Response Team has also expanded its efforts to Pilsen, Belmont-Cragin and Little Village. Since March, more than a quarter of those who died in Chicago were Latino as of July 29. Little Village, with 121 deaths, is the network with the maximum number of deaths in the city.
“Over the past two months, we’ve noticed that Latino netpainting numbers are exploding,” said Luis Gutiérrez, an immediate reaction team member and CEO of Latinos Progressing. “One of the things the team has done is let the knowledge consultant make the paintings that are being positioned within the running group.”
In selected communities, six new verification sites have been opened. Specifically, to succeed in more residents, there are 4 static verification sites and two cell verification sites compatible with the day. More than one million masks and 6,000 boxes of food were distributed.
The team also focused on raising awareness of COVID-19, distributing more than 250,000 fliers.
“So we went from a network with very little to masks, gloves and disinfectants, for example, to a network that worked very hard to make sure everyone had those things,” Gutierrez added.
The Rapid Response Team also used its network and network connections to offload monetary assistance at a time when the pandemic left approximately 1.5 million unemployed people in Illinois.
At Auburn Gresham, for example, $380,000 distributed to 250 families to help pay rent, loan and application bills.
“Many other people who arrive are not deficient or homeless people,” Nelson said. “These are middle-income families who have faced COVID-19. Loss of income and wages, and is limited to food.”
The disparities also come with the lack of the Internet for many families. In Austin, the team distributed 500 laptops and worked with Comcast to supply Internet families at a reduced cost, said Darnell Shields, CEO of Austin Coming Together.
“Because of the disparities in these communities, there are more casualties in those communities,” Shields said. “And much comes down to a lack of resources, and that comes down to structural racism, and methods and policies rooted in structural racism, which do not allow predominantly Latino and black communities to thrive.”
Anton Seals, Jr., CEO of South Shore Works, said the coordination and efforts of multiple communities are to ensure that equitable resources meet the desires of the most vulnerable city.
“Then, all over the south and west, there is a united force between the basic black and Latino communities around what this city can reinvent itself,” Seals said.
“Many of our communities don’t request documents,” he added. “We ask for our fair percentage because we make a contribution, especially in this city, where most people who are black and Latino are the tax base. What we’re asking for is our fair percentage.”
Gutierrez said that while the immediate reaction team has an impact, “it will take time to specifically solve the underlying problems that have brought us to this point.”
Community leaders have identified that these underlying disorders, decades of divestment in black and Latino communities, can seem like a difficult battle. From ensuring a limited budget and resources to locating spaces to put those resources, demanding situations are obvious.
“Each of the nonprofits in the working group, for lack of further expression, has now necessarily opened small stores, because we are now guilty of soliciting donations around non-public protective equipment,” Gutierrez told me. “Then get those donations and then reassign them to network residents, local businesses, and local nonprofit organizations.
“Most nonprofits I know do this, for example, with their own vehicles,” Gutierrez continued. “We are for donations of trucks, vans, vans, anything that can help us move part of this appliance to our offices and the net as temporally as possible.
Efforts are also a challenge for the other people who make the paintings, demanding situations that existed even before the pandemic began. For Gutierrez’s organization, desires have increased, but not his staff.
“We want the investment to rejuveny our matrix,” Gutierrez said. “We still have the same amount we had before COVID, and we were dealing with many of those problems before COVID. Now we approach and ask them to take another step on behalf of the City of Chicago, and while they are willing to do so, it is a huge burden to put on an already depleted matrix.”
Chicago is not addressing the systemic inequalities that have wraged in its communities.
Community leaders in New York also presented their Working Group on Racial Inclusion and Equity in April, which included longer-term strategies. Several of them have already begun, adding new systems to help minority business homeowners navigate the public procurement process, as well as a mediation assignment to help landlords and tenants contract disputes outside the courts.
While the Chicago team doesn’t know how long their existing resources will last, they are also long-term responses to their communities.
Last month, Lightfoot announced an $11 million investment for two advances on the south and west sides of the city, adding the rehabilitation of a vacant construction on ’79 and Halsted, not for distribution gifts. It will be a full-service fitness and wellness center.
“[It’s] about saving lives in the community,” Nelson said.
It is not known how long the rapid response team will be able to continue to assist the network in their work. Shields admitted that there was an underlying long-term concern and whether the team could do everything they can for their communities before resources run out.
“There is a concern of that, that resources are limited,” Shields said. “And there’s a sense, more or less, of repositioning things so that we can deal with what lately is the biggestic danger at that time in terms of data.”
But Shields said he didn’t want to let that concern get bogged down in the paintings that motivate him every day.
“It didn’t work from a position of fear, it worked from a position of faith,” he said. “With the time we have, we are doing everything we can to protect things that are permanent and even if the workforce dissolves.”
As deaths in communities like Auburn Gresham continue to increase, Nelson said it would take time to undo decades of forgetfulness, and efforts like food distribution that will continue to take up position every Tuesday, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., through August. It is open to citizens of all communities. Efforts like these, Nelson said, have helped feed thousands of people.
But for him and the immediate reaction team, the paintings have just begun.
“We have a long way to go,” Nelson said, “I’ll have to say it.”