In October leaders from the local Black Lives Matter movement talked with me about factors that affect travel options for African-Americans in Chicago, but that are sometimes overlooked by decision makers. These include subpar public transit service, unsafe walking conditions, and limited access to bike facilities, as well as expenses like train fares and traffic fines that can be significant for poor and working-class people. Worries about street crime and police abuse also influence their transportation choices.
“Undocumented residents often live in areas with poor public transit access,” she said. “There’s a big intersection between immigration and transportation—where you can afford to live, where your job is, and whether you can afford to drive. . . . “You see people getting up really early to make it to low-wage jobs via CTA.”
Zamudio, also 25, was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, immigrated to Joliet with her family when she was four, and now lives in Pilsen. Earlier this decade she helped organize a campaign by the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization and other groups to restore CTA bus service on 31st Street. Since Little Village is a blue-collar Mexican neighborhood—with the highest percentage of residents under 18 of any Chicago community, according to the U.S. Census—it has a high demand for transit service, as do most other local Latino neighborhoods. The route had been canceled in 1997 due to low ridership, leaving the #21 Cermak and #60 Blue Island/26th Street buses as the only east-west bus lines serving Little Village.
Still, the Bloomingdale Trail elevated greenway, which opened last year along the border of Humboldt Park and Logan Square, as well as the current proliferation of upscale transit-oriented developments along Milwaukee Avenue, have recently fueled concerns about Latinos being priced out of nearby areas. All three activists said that the while Bloomingdale, aka the 606, started out as a grassroots, neighborhood-driven initiative, after the city took over the project it turned into a high-profile attraction that has created a real estate boom, accelerating the ongoing displacement of the area’s poor and working-class residents. A recent DePaul University study found that single-family home prices near the trail have risen by nearly 50 percent over the past three years.
Last week Somos members confronted the developer, Enrico Plati, while he was at the Logan Bar & Grill.
