_{Written By: Kevin Alcaide}

“One does not sell the Earth, upon which people walk” (Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota War Chief, 1875).

     The YAOTL group visited a prairie preserve by Ashland and 55^th, in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood. The purpose of the trip was to learn the History of the Chicago River. Adam Kessler, our tour guide, from the Al Raby/American Indian Center, explained reasons why the river is dark and polluted.

     “Our water is supposedly clean but they put a lot of chemicals in our water”, said Carolina Macias a member of YAOTL. As told by Adam Kessler, and validated as the history of the Chicago river, a place once filled with swamps, naturally filtrating the water along with the help of other plants.  However, the Europeans overlooked the essence of the swamps and prairie lands. Only viewing the land as profit, consequently raping the earth, destroying its natural cycle, along with nature’s balance.

     “The Europeans thought the swamps were disgusting, that it smelled bad and had to fix it”, said Adam Kessler.

     Once pollution became more pervasive, and people began to get sick, something had to be done.

          “It would go to their water they would drink it and get sick”, responded Viviana Galvan member of the YAOTL group.

          Adam informed us about how action was taken by draining the river and excavating it. The water would flow the opposite way and not continue to further pollute lake Michigan. Changing the river’s natural flow seemed to benefit at the time. In order to look good and prosper, we couldn’t allow pollution to diminish that.

          “It was not a nice view, they wanted to go against nature, completely turning around its natural flow”, said Carolina Macias (YAOTL).

          She argued that the Europeans had no environmental/health concerns, and didn’t think about the future effects, of which we deal with today. Part of the tour included background on herbs and weeds used for remedies. For example, Echinacea can be used to aid a toothache, and Rose Hips as antioxidant source.

          “It is good to learn how to use plants for medicinal use, and maintain the natural ecosystem” Said Hannah Weinstein, who is also part of the YAOTL group.

          Creating riverbanks high up from the river restrained plants to be able to filtrate the waters from the river.

          “It is important to grow plants along the river, they are essential to the life that lives there, some help keep water clean and its part of the ecological cycle” said Brenda Elizabeth Becerra from YAOTL .

          Many things are causing the river to be polluted, including those canals and bridges built long ago. In order to avoid pollution, or in other words, move pollution elsewhere, the river’s natural flow was altered. Consequently, Europeans became terrorist to the natives, throwing them out of their land, killing families, and selling land for profit.

By: Brenda B.

This summer as part of my youth internship at LVEJO I worked with the Public Transit campaign. I have got to say I definitely did not know what to expect. It was the first time I had worked on that specific campaign so I had a lot to learn. The main priority for the summer was to get in touch with politicians to see how we could meet the sufficient funds that are needed to put the much needed 31^st Street CTA bus back in service. CTA says that they do not have money to put this route in service, but through the JARC program we have gained the opportunity to put the proposed route in service temporarily if we can meet the sufficient federal funds. If the funds were not met by a certain date the grant money from the JARC program would be lapsed, luckily LVEJO was able to renew the grant.

The plan was to get in touch with all the representatives whose wards would be along the proposed 31^st Street route, but most importantly we wanted to sit down with them individually to talk about the route and get their support. When it came down to the phone calls I would usually get a secretary that answered the phone and had no clue what I was calling about, some resulted in no answer, others were simply too busy to hear me out and told me to call back or email them. What I learned from that experience is that you have to keep bugging your politicians if you want an answer. They are more likely to listen if you meet with them in person and present the issue/concern. After days of contacting all the representatives to set up a meeting with them individually, we got replies from Dena Carli, Congressman Gutierrez, and Representative Hernandez. I was fortunate to have been able to attend the meeting with Representative Hernandez. Overall she was all for the route and gave us her support because she used to live in Little Village with her mother when she was younger and she expressed some of the many ways the route would benefit the community she serves. Talking to someone who understands the needs of communities was pleasant. We need politicians to envision the benefits this proposed route would bring to their communities and get the support of the people who live in the communities along the route. Having the support of at least one politician is a good start but we need the support of many.

 Bioneers was a chance to learn new things about topics we all can relate to, such as Food sovereignty and education. This event was made possible thanks to Peter Schwartzman a professor at Knox College. I’m thankful to Selene, the Urban Land Organizer  at LVEJO for inviting me on this trip.

    The First speaker conveyed distress around the education system, she argued that our education system limits the amount of knowledge students receive in order to be sustainable, and centralize the ideas around how to deal if ever we run out of resources. As a child Karen Brown learned that diesel fuel was the best source of energy, and was said to be harmless. She spoke about the false solutions the government has in mind in case of catastrophe in this earth i.e. leaving to a different planet. Here she made it clear that running away won’t solve anything if nothing sustainable waits for us above, but rather we should change our education system so that it is possible to learn new ways of being sustainable “here on Earth” (Karen Brown, Revolutionizing k-12 education with sustainability in mind).

    As part of the trip we visited the prairie, were we picked seeds to bring back home. We also learned that a diverse ecosystem is less vulnerable in this time of climate change. Things like having a personal garden, community garden creates a sanctuary of your own pesticides free, organic fruits and vegetables. This can also be called the food movement. In which case people decide to stop being forced to buy transported goods, which not only contribute to the pollution but are grown with many toxins.