Letters of Support
Pauline Lipman
Annie Knepler
James Tracy
Greg Sholette
Micah Maidenberg
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Pauline Lipman
January 5, 2007
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing this letter to express my appreciation for the publication AREA and my support for its continued growth and development. AREA has become an important and unique publication/project in Chicago. From the city’s mainstream corporate media (the major newspapers, TV and radio stations, including public radio) one would have little inkling that bubbling beneath the surface of ever-expanding downtown skyscrapers, tourist destinations, and condominium mania there is a vibrant and diverse grass roots resistance to inequality, injustice, and shrinking public space in the city. AREA is one of very few publications that bring us the voices of that resistance. As a publication, it is a fresh and timely voice articulating the energy and creativity of Chicago grassroots activism of all stripes. Each of its issues has brought together diverse, critical perspectives on key issues in the city. As a project, it actually creates a space of dialogue and common ground among social activists from a wide range of communities, political projects, and points of view. This aspect of the project is realized in AREA release parties which create a physical space for this dialogue.
I had the honor of being asked to write an introductory article for the first issue of AREA on the changing nature of the city and efforts by grassroots organizations and artists to challenge injustices in housing, transportation, and the use of public space. A few weeks after the first issue was published, I was contacted by the producers of a Toronto public radio (CBC) news show. They were developing a week-long series on Chicago as a model of urban development that Toronto’s mayor was proposing to emulate. The show’s producers had found my article in AREA on-line and wanted to interview me for the series. They told me the publication was the only thing they found that challenged the city’s development strategy and that raised questions about the displacement and exclusion of low-income and working class people of color. I think this anecdote reflects a larger truth – in a period of media consolidation and info-bite news there is a need for, and an audience for, a small (though expanding), relevant, and honest publication that voices multifaceted critique and resistance. I am looking forward to continued collaboration with the community being built through and around AREA.
Sincerely,
Pauline Lipman
Professor, Policy Studies in Education
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Annie Knepler
To Whom It May Concern,
I am pleased to write a letter of support for AREA Chicago and I welcome the chance to highlight the depth, quality, and importance of AREA’s publications and programming. I have been a member of AREA’s advisory committee since its inception and have worked as a volunteer editor and proofreader. Furthermore, the Neighborhood Writing Alliance has collaborated with AREA on several projects, including a series of public forums and the reprinting of pieces by Journal of Ordinary Thought writers, and each time we have benefited from their knowledge, resources, and their ability to work incredibly well (and tirelessly) with others. My commitment to AREA Chicago is indicative of the interest and dedication the project has instilled in those involved with it.
AREA Chicago serves an important function by recognizing the varied projects throughout the city that creatively address social issues. By documenting these projects in their biannual publication, AREA helps demonstrate the dynamic ways in which Chicago’s social, artistic, and physical landscape is shaped in large part by the works and actions of its residents. And AREA does more than document these projects; it serves as a potential site for networking among those organizations. In doing so, AREA fulfils an important need in a city where smaller projects depend on collaboration.
I have been consistently impressed by the quality and relevance of the work produced in AREA’s bi-annual publication. I look forward to each issue’s release and regularly apply the ideas, analysis, and information I receive from AREA articles. Each issue is extensively researched, and the editors and AREA associates work hard to seek out projects and articles from communities that receive too little press in the mainstream media. This research demonstrates AREA’s commitment to encouraging new voices and perspectives.
AREA’s programming, including its release events, help further the mission of the publication. The “Infrastructure Lecture Series” exposes Chicagoans to new ideas, and the release events--always crowded, lively, and diverse--provide an opportunity for people from a variety of projects to meet and share ideas. Despite the amount of programming in Chicago, there are few opportunities for people from such a wide range places and organizations to come together.
In just two years, AREA has made a significant impact on the city. In the coming months and years, I hope to see AREA sustain its dynamic and important work.
Sincerely,
Annie Knepler
Associate Director, Neighborhood Writing Alliance
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James Tracy
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing to you to express my wholehearted support for AREA Magazine. The project seemlessly ignites conversation around deep seated urban issues while remaining absolutely practical and useful. Similar efforts tend to gravitate towards two opposite poles: inaccessible theory or single-issue reporting. The editors of AREA of found a new path, producing an intelligent, entertaining and subversive read that honors the community organizing traditions of their hometown while pushing the reader to think of new possibilities.
As the President of the San Francisco Community Land Trust, I was invited to give a talk in Chicago by AREA on the topic of new directions in housing policy. It was there where I witnessed what AREA is really up to: bringing together people who might never have a chance to meet each other to think about the direction of the city. At the event were local organizers, public housing residents, planners, artists, union workers, just to name a few. I returned to San Francisco inspired by their work, as unusual alliances are one of the only ways forward today.
Please feel free to contact me at (415) 260-9496 if you have any further questions.
Best,
James Tracy, San Francisco Community Land Trust
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Greg Sholette
To Whom It May Concern:
I write this letter to support the important work of AREA. As a writer I find the resources this project makes available to me extremely valuable. As someone who is not based in Chicago, I find AREA imperative to expanding my horizons. And as the co-founder of two artist collectives (Political Art Documentation/Distribution and REPOhistory) I am constantly impressed by the way Daniel Tucker, and his colleagues, Jim Duignan and Dakota Brown, have broken open the mold that shapes the typical NFP in order to produce a sustained practice combining organizing, critical writing, cultural pedagogy, and activist urbanism. Added to this list of activities is the journal that AREA publishes twice a year. This publication, combined with the group’s exemplary use of the Internet, produces a unique resource that reaches beyond the mid-west home base of AREA and informs artists and writers, educators and urban activists from New York to Montreal, from Budapest, to Zagreb and beyond regarding such pertinent issues as gentrification, incarceration, globalism, and the geopolitical mapping of our present socio-political coordinates.
Such endeavors are all the more impressive at a time when so much is at stake within the areas of contemporary culture, civic society, and the public sphere in general, yet so little is being systematically attempted. Yes, certainly much has been written lately about artists who engage issues of politics. Museums and other mainstream cultural institutions have once again, if cautiously, begun to display such work. However, strong, creative work produced outside the institutional frame in a sustained way is still largely invisible. Such practices often involve forgoing critical attention of the type typically heaped upon gallery artists. That is often too high a price to pay in our professionally obsessed society. And while I hope such blindness does not last, its reality makes support for groups such as AREA all the more pressing.
It is fair to say that Chicago is a place where the need for a critical response to social ills outstrips the means for such engagement. Fortunately for Chicagoans, AREA provides not only a fresh perspective on cultural criticism, but it also fills a sizeable gap left by the collapse of other regionally-based publications, most notably the New Art Examiner. However, by virtue of its being rooted in a specific location and a particular community, AREA has gone on to develop a broader network of interests seeking to develop similar practices across the U.S. and the globe. In a phrase, AREA is inspiring to all artists and activists who themselves aspire to engage the social sphere in a critical way.
Sincerely yours,
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Gregory Sholette
January 10, 2007
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Micah Maidenberg
February 17, 2007
To Whom it May Concern:
I currently work as a reporter for a small weekly newspaper that covers a cluster of rural communities along the coast north of San Francisco. Prior to this job, I held reporting and research positions in Virginia and New York City, respectively, and prior to those affairs, I lived and worked in Chicago. Full disclosure requires me to write that I have contributed articles and editorial ideas for AREA-Chicago.
My position as an insider and outsider to both AREA and Chicago perhaps makes me particularly informed to sing its praises. In the midst of my transitory life, my appreciation of AREA has only increased. Reading the first four issues of AREA together reveals a publication able to embrace the everyday churn of activities, decision, changes and ideas taking hold in Chicago, and stand above that fray, asking the kind of questions and convening diverse individuals and groups in a way other publications cannot. By performing this role, AREA has demonstrated it is essential reading for anyone concerned with how Chicago is changing, and what is possible within the city’s shift along neoliberal, globalized lines.
AREA is at least as multifaceted as the city itself. AREA covers a vast range of issues, styles and ideas; incorporates history, art, education and intellecutal theorizing and grassroots organizing into its pages; and involves dozens of people from neighborhoods across the city in its creation. It is a hybrid form, one that suits its many subjects well: it has elements of magazine-style journalism in each issue, personal reflections, academic articles, timelines, interviews and smaller tidbits. AREA never fails to be stuffed with information and yet the publication never publishes something as filler.
AREA is pioneering a critical method in Chicago. From my perspective as a newspaper reporter, I can write honestly that many of us in the press would do well to mimic its interrogations of the city. I have experienced this personally. AREA in fact does more than inform how I try to practice journalism; rather, I unabashedly steal its method. Upon arriving in a new city or region as I have done often of late, I begin accumulating contacts, documents and maps of my new home. I ask for historical perspectives and try to understand the forces shaping the cities I cover. I think about how the local scale becomes relevant and irrelevant. I try to report and write about local issues and contention with the same critical eye AREA deploys in each issue. It is easier to talk about doing this than actually making it happen: small publications, like the ones I have worked for, fall often prey to boosterism and a parochial sensibility. AREA does neither.
AREA is a demanding publication. It demands more from The City That Works by asking basic questions about justice and equity. It demands more from its readers by posing hard questions about the solidarity that is so often vaguely taken for granted by social movement actors. It demands attention be paid to the subtle ways change happens through the city by calling attention to Chicago’s forgetton political actors and small-scale initiatives, from guerilla art projects to urban gardeners. It is a publication that Chicago needs, and needs badly.
Yours sincerely,
Micah Maidenberg