I am writing in response to the article on “Activism v. Nihilism” by Bruce Fisher (Artvoice, August 7, 2008). I was born in Buffalo but grew up in Chicago, and I am back to visit twice a year. Each time I return I check out Artvoice, and I have enjoyed its normally sharp and insightful articles. I was appalled to read the utterly misinformed take on Chicago provided by Fisher, which seems a dire omen for Buffalo.

I grew up in the Chicago neighborhood called Logan Square, which Fisher misremembers as “Logan Park.” There isn’t even a park in Chicago called Logan Park. His dismal recollection of that “diverse” community ignores the fact that it was majority Latino, then as now. The history of how it “picked up” after such a “once frayed” past credits the same yuppies and real estate developers who have chased the use value out of so many Chicago neighborhoods and turned them into property stock markets. The result is widespread displacement of the hard-working families who fought for decades to rebuild the schools, community institutions, businesses and relationships that were already improving the area long before it became “hot.” I do not see how endless rows of identical cinder block luxury condos represent any kind of success story for Logan Square. This is especially true when the new occupants run straight to Starbucks and bypass Pancho’s, where you get a much more delicious cafe con leche.

Fisher gets more than Logan Square wrong. Chicago had a “green waterfront” all through the century and a half before becoming a “hip place to be,” and that did not stop rampant disinvestment and the gutting of the inner city. This writer has the gall to state that “[m]assive investment in transit worked” in the midst of a major Chicago transit crisis, after a decade of reduced service and the recent threatened shutdown of the entire system. He asserts that our population is up a hundred thousand because “[w]ell-off Caucasians are moving into the city,” which is patently false. The white population barely changed since 1990, since white flight proceeds apace with yuppie inundation. As people in Chicago know, the increase is due to immigrants who are almost entirely Latino.

Beyond these repeated errors there is a more disturbing, underlying problem. The article advocates for a kind of “activism” which is little more than the standard neoliberal plan to push poor people in general, and black and Latino people in particular, out of the central areas of cities in America. I have some news for him. Demolishing the Robert Taylor Homes did not do a single thing to get rid of the “ugly poverty” he bemoans in Chicago. In fact pushing poor people around—literally—only exacerbates the time and effort it takes to move out of poverty. Both the parallels and the major differences between Buffalo and Chicago are worthy of comparison that could benefit the Niagara region. Not only should this go beyond the boosterism of displacement, it should not even start there.

Clearly Bruce Fisher was not paying attention when he lived in Chicago. I wonder if he sees Buffalo at all, or even knows the name of his neighborhood today.

Jesse Mumm
Chicago

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