| No Images? Click here   On Thursday, HuffPost Highline published Ben Austen's terrific profile of Jedidiah Brown, an activist and civil rights leader in Chicago who attempted suicide this February. We asked Austen about his beautiful piece, which is really worth your time.How did this story come about? When did you start working on it? What relationship does it have to your work on your book?On the eve of the presidential election last year, Jedidiah Brown went to a cop-and-fireman neighborhood in Chicago called Mount Greenwood. A few hundred of its white residents came out in force in response to a small band of black activists who were protesting a police shooting there of a young black man. Try to recall that at this point no one predicted Donald Trump's victory, and the next day the surprise win made more sense — middle-class white voters felt like this even in Chicago! When I heard Jedidiah was going back to Mount Greenwood later that week to talk to residents and community leaders, I asked to tag along. I wanted to learn more about this epicenter in my city of the divisions that were roiling the country — and I wanted also to learn more about Jedidiah and his work.I have a book coming out in February called High-Risers. It's a social history of Cabrini-Green, which was Chicago's and the country's most iconic high-rise public housing complex. Cabrini-Green was constantly in the news and portrayed in popular culture during its six-decade life (Cooley High, Good Times, Candyman), and it became a synonym for high-crime area and government failure. All of its 23 towers were eventually demolished, and its residents — as many as 20,000 at one point — were relocated elsewhere. Like this article on Jedidiah, the book is a very human story — I try to capture the lives of people who made a home there, even as the city transformed around them and America's experiment with public housing was largely abandoned. Also like this article, High-Risers is a way to understand Chicago, and to understand the reality and perception of inner cities across the country.When you sat down to write the piece, did you have the final structure — with the shocking opening scene split into sections, and Jedidiah's ultimate fate unknown — in mind? How and why did you decide to structure the piece that way?I was already reporting this story before Jedidiah's suicide attempt. I had spent many days with him, seeing him work, traveling the city, and also interacting with other members of the larger community of Chicago activists. So, no, I had initially thought the story would open and end differently. I was focused then on the wrong-headed critique of young black activists — that they respond only to police shootings and not to problems in their own communities. "How many killed in your own neighborhood? Go home!" as I heard one woman yell at Jedidiah. I've come across that sentiment a lot, and it's repeated with every new protest, whether in St. Louis earlier this month or with NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem. But that criticism simply isn't true. I saw all this work going on in neighborhoods around the city that was out of sight of the cameras, and of little real interest to most people. (Similarly, Colin Kaepernick is quietly doing real work in black communities across the country.) I wanted to report on that. After Jedidiah's suicide attempt, I came to understand the story a little differently; I started to think about the emotional and financial and psychic toll of this relentless and punishing work on these young organizers. The personal trauma as the unspoken side effect of activism. That felt like a piece of the coverage since Trayvon Martin and Ferguson that hadn't been explored enough. Jedidiah's story is singular. But the personal toll of the work is true for so many in this generation of activists. I kept on hearing similar stories, people talking about their own struggles and their desire or need to quit.What's the most surprising thing you found out while reporting this story?I've done other reporting on activists in the city — young people in recent years who fought to make sure Chicago addressed a legacy of police torture carried out by [former Chicago Police Department commander] Jon Burge, or that the city prosecuted cases of police misconduct, or voted in a more progressive Cook County state's attorney, or opened a much-needed trauma center on the South Side. I'm like the deputy chief of staff to the mayor I quote in the article who is continually dismayed by their extremes of fearlessness, impracticality and resolve. I also saw a bit more clearly some of the naturally occurring divisions within the protest movement that are often (at least by outsiders) left unexplored, if not totally ignored — regarding sexuality, gender, age, religion, formal training, some relative notion of authenticity. Jedidiah kept on surprising me (and maybe some readers) because he turned out to traverse many of these identities in complicated and even problematic ways.What do you want readers to take away from the piece?I hope readers see Chicago in its complexity. Chicago is full of so much hope and despair, so much beauty and dysfunction. It's a tricky spot to be in as a writer — or anyone with a conscience and a love for Chicago who is portraying the city: You don't want to add to the one-dimensional "Chi-raq" views, to Trump's fear-mongering characterizations of the city. But at the same time, you hope readers wrestle with the realities of disinvestment and inequality. Jedidiah's efforts are quixotic and impulsive and even at times counterproductive. But he's driven by a desire to unite people, to unite Chicagoans. He believes people in Mount Greenwood or Englewood should treat the issues in South Shore or Lincoln Park as if they are their own, and vice versa. This vision of the city as a unified village is incredibly idealistic. But it's also a powerful symbol. Some aspect of it is needed to make Chicago a more equitable home.Love, |
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