{"id":2639,"date":"2023-05-23T09:01:45","date_gmt":"2023-05-23T13:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2639"},"modified":"2023-05-23T09:01:45","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T13:01:45","slug":"moving-into-the-neighborhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/23\/moving-into-the-neighborhood\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving Into the Neighborhood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>.
\u00a0
Long-time residents of Chicago can still remember when their mayor moved into hell.
\u00a0
Actually, Jane Byrne and her husband moved into the area on the Near North Side that had long been known as Little Hell.\u00a0
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That name went back to the 1850s, when Irish immigrants lived in dismal conditions near a gas refinery that filled the air with noxious fumes and shot pillars of fire into the sky.\u00a0 By the 1930s, the same real estate was identified as \u201cDeath Corner\u201d on a map that plotted Chicago\u2019s mob activity during the heyday of Al Capone.\u00a0 More than 50 gangland murders were documented in the neighborhood.
\u00a0
Things began to look brighter for the area in 1942 when city authorities decided to build some of America\u2019s first public housing units.\u00a0 A series of rowhouses and high rises were named after Mother Frances Cabrini (1850-1917), an Italian-American sister who served the urban poor and became our nation\u2019s first Catholic saint.\u00a0 In 1962, the William Green Homes were built nearby, which honored the memory of one of Chicago\u2019s most famous labor leaders.\u00a0
\u00a0
Thus was born the Cabrini-Green housing projects, a name that is now associated almost exclusively with crime and hopelessness.
\u00a0
Sociologists will no doubt spend the next century trying to understand how the bright idealism of public housing took such a dark turn. \u00a0Cabrini-Green was home at one point for at least 15,000 people \u2013 essentially a small town embedded within a big city.\u00a0 In the 1980s, the population was overwhelmingly Black, poor, and young.\u00a0 One survey revealed that only 9% of the residents were employed.\u00a0
\u00a0
Cabrini-Green became a central staging area for gang activity and drug deals.\u00a0 The high-rise elevators (when they worked) were dangerous places to enter at any hour of the day.\u00a0 Those who walked up the stairwells risked being mugged or raped.\u00a0 Chain-link fencing was bolted to the outside of the balconies so residents would stop hurling trash to the courtyards below \u2013 and to prevent people from either falling or being pushed to their deaths.\u00a0 At one point, the interior trash chutes were packed all the way up to the 15th<\/sup> floor.\u00a0
\u00a0
Snipers regularly assumed positions on the top floors so they could take potshots at rival gang members on the street.\u00a0 Police and first responders tended to keep their distance, designating the projects a \u201cNo-Go\u201d area, which only accelerated the dangers for those who had to live there.\u00a0 When fires broke out, the burned-out apartments were simply boarded up.\u00a0
\u00a0
It\u2019s no surprise that many authorities concluded Cabrini-Green was so unsafe as to be uninhabitable.\u00a0
\u00a0
That\u2019s when Jane Byrne decided to do something dramatic.
\u00a0
Running as a reform-minded Democrat in 1979, she had been elected mayor \u201cfor all Chicago,\u201d winning more than 82% of the vote \u2013 still a record for the city. \u00a0She and everyone else were appalled that between January and March 1981, 11 people had been murdered in the projects.\u00a0 She wrote in her 2004 memoir, \u201cHow could I put Cabrini on a bigger map?\u00a0 Suddenly I knew \u2013 I could move in there.\u201d
\u00a0
On March 26, 1981, she and her husband Jay McMullen moved into a fourth-floor apartment in one of the high-rises, vowing to stay \u201cas long as it takes to clean it up.\u201d
\u00a0
She didn\u2019t come alone.
\u00a0
Police and bodyguards stayed with them at all times.\u00a0 On the first night, police officers made multiple arrests of individuals who were planning to have a shootout in the mayor\u2019s building.\u00a0 The rear entryway of her unit was welded shut, so potential attackers could approach only by means of the front entrance.\u00a0 As historian Laura Marriott notes, \u201cThis had the unwelcome side effect of creating a fortified area for gangs to use after her departure.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0
The mayor stayed only three weeks.\u00a0 Her political rivals snickered that it had all been just a publicity stunt.\u00a0 McMullen, for his part, regularly dropped in on Cabrini-Green, where he coached a baseball and basketball team for street kids.\u00a0 But all in all, it was a lot harder to live in hell than anyone imagined.\u00a0
\u00a0
Mercifully, the projects were finally condemned and then torn down in 2011.\u00a0 Now they\u2019re just an exceedingly painful memory.
\u00a0
Jayne Byrne isn\u2019t the only person who moved into hell.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
\u00a0
Jesus did, too.\u00a0
\u00a0
He took up residence in a world that has never outgrown its foolishness and cruelty, whose residents find endlessly creative ways to divide others into Winners and Losers, and whose Religious Establishment considered it their duty to put him to death.\u00a0 He lived amongst people who flunked Spiritual Discernment 101 \u2013 men and women who failed to recognize his true identity.\u00a0
\u00a0
As the Gospel writer John puts it, \u201cHe was in the world, and the world was there through him, and yet the world didn\u2019t even notice.\u00a0 He came to his own people, but they didn\u2019t want him\u2026. The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood\u201d (John 1:9-10, 14, The<\/em> Message<\/em>).\u00a0
\u00a0
It proved to be a very dangerous place.\u00a0
\u00a0
But he didn\u2019t come with bodyguards.\u00a0 Or police protection.\u00a0 Nor did he stay for just three weeks.\u00a0
\u00a0
Jesus spent at least 30 years in this world, and something like three years touching lepers, confronting hypocrites, forgiving enemies, and teaching the same things over and over again to dimwitted disciples like us.
\u00a0
But it wasn\u2019t a stunt.\u00a0 And the most amazing thing of all?
\u00a0
Jesus clearly thought it was worth it.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>

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To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here.\u00a0Long-time residents of Chicago can still remember when their mayor moved into hell.\u00a0Actually, Jane Byrne and her husband moved into the area on the Near North Side that had long been known as Little Hell.\u00a0\u00a0That name went back to the 1850s, when Irish immigrants lived in dismal conditions near a gas refinery… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-2639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-incarnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2641,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions\/2641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}