Little Village residents want school buildings torn down

About 50 protesters marched outside the Chicago Public Schools headquarters Aug. 22 demanding the district demolish two buildings in their Little Village neighborhood.

The protesters say the buildings, the former Washburne Trade School building and a former ROTC building on the Telpochcalli Elementary School’s campus, are an eyesore and pose a hazard to the community.

Dressed in yellow and some wearing hard hats, parents, children and community leaders from the predominantly Mexican neighborhood held signs in English and Spanish showing their frustration that the buildings have not been torn down.

Henry Cervantes, a member of the Telpochcalli Community Education Project, said three busloads of Little Village residents came to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the Chicago Board of Education, which owns the two buildings on the city’s West Side.

“We’re a community gathering together,” said Cervantes, 20, and holding a bullhorn. “We just want CPS to come through with what they said they would do. We’re wearing construction clothes to show we can tear the buildings down today.”

The Chicago Board of Education closed Washburne Trade School, which covers two square blocks on 31st Street and Kedzie Avenue, in 1993. In June 2005, school officials applied for a demolition permit. The other building residents want destroyed, the former ROTC building adjacent to Telpochcalli Elementary School located at 2832 W. 24th Blvd., has been closed for eight years.

Dion Miller Perez, executive director of Telpochcalli Community Education Project, who lives one block from the ROTC building, said when a large public institution like CPS constantly ignores his community’s demands it makes residents ask, “is my neighborhood important?”

“The idea is to put pressure on them to say, ‘Look, you can’t keep ignoring us,’” said Miller Perez. “They don’t have to wait for the roof to collapse.”

The Washburne Trade School property was described as being in a state of “dilapidation,” according to the June 13 City Council Committee Journal. The report goes on to say the property lacks ventilation and sanitary facilities, and has environmental cleanup issues.

Protesters attended the Aug. 22nd meeting, at which two of them  were allowed to speak for a total of four minutes.

“We ask that you demolish these buildings as soon as possible,” Macrina Sandoval said through a translator.

Board President Rufus Williams did not give the Little Village community members the answers they were looking for.

“It takes a number of city departments to make that happen,” Williams said, referring to demolition. “We’ll keep it on the level of high priority.”

But Little Village community leader Nelson Benitez said the protesters won’t stop until the buildings come down.

“We are representing 90,000 people from Little Village,” said Benitez. “We want to become part of the discussion.”

Little Village is the most densely populated neighborhood in Chicago, with almost 70,000 of the more than 90,000 people who live there are of Mexican descent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.