Folks moving to our neighborhood are greeted by these fine gents upon leaving U-Haul near Broadway and Irving Park. The men loiter, and litter, directly across the street or even in front of the entrance to U-Haul hoping to "help" someone move. We also noticed an extremely large quantity of U-Haul trucks lining streets in the area. Good luck finding street parking. If you would like to let U-Haul know that these men are not appreciated in your moving process, call 773-871-7155 or the Alderman's office.
A couple years ago, I hired a couple of these guys to help me move some furniture I purchased. The original movers didn't show, and I was left stuck. And then I remembered the guys always across the street from the UHaul. Talking to them, they were pretty nice guys. No moving equipment, but steady hands, strong backs and an eagerness to earn some money. They did good work. Most, it turns out, were having some hard times. Two of the three I talked to spent time in prison for drug possession when they were younger, and the felony convictions makes it really tough for them to get a job now. I'm not excusing that, but the stuff that they got nailed for holding is present in about 50% of the dorm rooms and apartments on our college campuses. Mine included. But the cops in Champaign didn't make a habit of randomly searching the college kids whose tuition made their entire town's economy go. Lucky us. Poor moving guys. Anyway, you get the picture. I couldn't disagree with you more. These guys are polite, sober and looking for work. What could you possibly have against that? Or maybe there is something about the way they look you just don't like? Hmmm...
ReplyDeleteIf you believe they are all looking for honest work to provide themselves with food and shelter, you've been duped. Plenty of people, including neighborhood children, have witnessed many of them urinating, drinking, and participating in drug sales. However, even if 1 of these guys is only doing this for food and shelter, you also damaged this one person's motivation to get lasting help.
ReplyDeletePlease do them a favor and the community a favor and do not hire these men.
As many have said here before, this area has NUMEROUS organizations where a person wanting to honestly get his/her life back together can do so... without loitering, drinking in public, harassing U-Haul customers, and cat-calling ladies.
ReplyDeleteCenter,
ReplyDeleteyou MAY have had a good experience, but I doubt it. I think you speak with forked tongue.
Now I've been around this area since before the white man drove out the buffalo. Those guys have been hanging out there, drinking, partaking in other mind altering substances, and harassing women a good part of that time.
I walk by there frequently and observe all those behaviors.
Some of them may have gotten a rotten deal from the criminal justice system but there are better ways to try to make a living than hanging out with that crowd.
I've personally seen members of this crowd drinking, littering, and arguing with one another. I've also seen members carted away by cops who pulled a quick roust one early afternoon. BUT take all of these things out of the equation, CENTER, and you still have one glaring contradiction to your scenario of down-on-their-luck decent folk and that is the fact that they RARELY EVER GET HIRED by people using the Uhaul!!!
ReplyDeleteThe number of guys there can sometimes border on double digits and I walk by there enough times to know that they are not getting picked up regulalry enough (if at all) to make this a viable money-making operation. What it more closely resembles is a hang out--a place where they can meet, talk, and quite often get into trouble.
No matter how you slice it, it's a bad scene. If you want to raise the "help someone out" flag, you'd be much better off directing them to apply for a job at the Quiznos a few blocks down.
I just had the police called on these guys last week b/c they were drinking (yet again) on the sidewalk.
ReplyDeleteI hate it when people accuse others of lying without good evidence, but Irishpirate ain't the only one who got a suspicious vibe off Center's "success" story with these "movers". So I'll just say it - I think Center made that up.
ReplyDeleteYep,
ReplyDeletethe "story" is too perfect. Reflects an agenda more than the honesty.
Champaign, steady hands, drug charges........my BS meter went way off the chart.
Let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
GRRRRRRRRRRRR.
People Often Think An Opinion Heard Repeatedly From The Same Person Is Actually A Popular Opinion
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070520183447.htm
Science Daily — Whether people are making financial decisions in the stock market or worrying about terrorism, they are likely to be influenced by what others think. And, according to a new study in this month's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA), repeated exposure to one person's viewpoint can have almost as much influence as exposure to shared opinions from multiple people. This finding shows that hearing an opinion multiple times increases the recipient's sense of familiarity and in some cases gives a listener a false sense that an opinion is more widespread then it actually is.
In a series of six experiments that included 1044 students, from the University of Michigan, Princeton University, Rutgers University, University of Michigan -- Dearborn, University of Toledo and Harvard University, researchers sought to understand individuals' accuracy in identifying group norms and opinions. The experiments included dividing students into three groups, (three person control group, single opinion group and repeated opinions group).
Participants in the three person control group read three opinion statements each made by a different group member. The participants in the repeated opinion group read the same three statements but they were all attributed to one group member. Those in the single opinion control group read one opinion statement from one group member.
The studies found that an opinion is more likely to be assumed to be the majority opinion when multiple group members express their opinion. However, the study also showed that hearing one person express the same opinion multiple times had nearly the same effect on listener's perception of the opinion being popular as hearing multiple people state his/her opinion.
Researchers examined the underlying processes that take place when individuals estimate the shared attitude of a group of people and how that estimation of collective opinion can be influenced by repetition from a single source. Since gauging public opinion is such an essential component in guiding our social interactions, this research has implications in almost every facet of modern day life.
"This study conveys an important message about how people construct estimates of group opinion based on subjective experiences of familiarity," states lead author Kimberlee Weaver, (Ph.D), of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. "The repetition effect observed in this research can help us to understand how our own impressions are influenced by what we perceive to be the reality of others. For example, a congressman may get multiple phone calls from a small number of constituents requesting a certain policy be implemented or changed, and from those requests must decide how voters in their state feel about the issue. This study sheds light on the cognitive processes that take place that may influence such a decision."
Article: Inferring the Popularity of an Opinion From Its Familiarity: A Repetitive Voice Can Sound Like a Chorus. Kimberlee Weaver, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Stephen M. Garcia and Norbert Schwarz, University of Michigan, and Dale T. Miller, Stanford University; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Vol. 92, No. 5
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by American Psychological Association.
James, Please, Explain, no comprehend, what is to become of these men?:
However, even if 1 of these guys is only doing this for food and shelter, you also damaged this one person's motivation to get lasting help.
Please do them a favor and the community a favor and do not hire these men.
Quick fixes don't work. What is to become of these men if they sit outside all day, and they only get a few bucks now and then when someone hires them? They may get enough money to pay for a night's sleep at the Hotel Chateau, but there would still be plenty of days when they have to go to a shelter.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be better to have them focus their energy instead on getting steady employement so that they could get permanent housing?
I am not sure Center is lying. I just think it's annoying that he/she tried to make it into a race thing ("something about the way they look you don't like") instead of just realizing...this isn't right b/c they are Breaking the Law consistantly on the street there!
ReplyDeleteJames,
ReplyDelete"many of them?" Everybody in the picture?
Go to the police. People urinating in the streets, it is not like we are dogs, is it? When UU, or is it yo-yo, gets a picture of someone urinating, drinking, drug selling, then I'll believe you.
What do you know about getting lasting help and making it through a night? What do you really know>
you sound totally incaplebull of purifying Uptown, more like a bigoted bully who don't know shit.
Blight to me is an empty storefront with a Vote for Cappleman sign in the window. Is this your shadow organization?
IDS-
ReplyDeleteIf you cannot relay your opinion without resorting to name-calling and swearing then you will find your comments deleted. Consider this fair warning.
IDS,
ReplyDeleteYou called James Cappleman a "bigoted bully who don't know shit. Well IDS, I know "shit". "Shit" is a friend of mine and James Cappleman knows "shit".
Before you post you should try to be sober and use spell check or a dictionary. "Incaplebull" is an apt description for your mental state, opinions, and spelling abilities.
As for seeing a few Cappleman for Alderman signs in vacant storefront windows..........yea..it is all a big conspiracy.
He is also keeping the storefronts vacant. If only people would support Alderman Shiller all storefronts would be rented and producing tax income.
Toodles.
ids, I'm speaking as a licensed clinical social worker. I founded a homeless shelter for people with HIV back in the days when nursing homes refused them.
ReplyDeleteWhat I believe is supported by the social work profession. Had I accepted your belief about what is the most appropriate way of helping the homeless, I would have flunked out of graduate school. If we are going to be committed to helping the poor, we must go beyond good intentions.
We both agree that the homeless deserve compassion and a chance for hope. We part ways on how to do that.
Why are there so many homeless in Uptown?
ReplyDeleteJames,
ReplyDeleteRespectfully, I do not believe you should hold yourself out as representing the social work profession, if for no other reason than commenting on an innocent picture of two men and tagging them as dishonest, public pee-ers, drunks and drug dealers, telling the community not to give them a hand, saying giving them a dollar for a days work so they can get a good night sleep will damage their hope. You cannot even say what to do with them, except to tell them to go get a real job. Jeez, W. Bush graduated from Grad school, I guess graduating from a grad school makes you smart like that. If your understanding of my belief is that Uptown is better off that you lost, on that I will agree with you. So much else of what you say makes no sense to me.
Uptown Updater,
I was called dumb and stupid under another of your pictures and it went without remark. I guess calling someone yo-yo is worse on another scale I am not familiar with. I find that on par with the balance found on your blog. Is prohibiting the 'It' word part of your purify Uptown campaign? I guess it is appropriate to take pictures of people and allow other to call them thieves, public pee-ers, etc., without any proof. You know, about all of your pictures of the people you do not want to live around (people of color and appearing low income) are taken of their back side, can't you face them? What are you worried about? Are you trying to dehumanize them to make it more comfortable to sweep them out of Uptown like they are a bunch of broken windows or roaches?
IDS-
ReplyDeleteYou do keep this blog lively, we will give you that.
We do not think that anyone is advocating sweeping ANYONE out of Uptown. We do believe that the abundance of social service agencies in Uptown should be doing a better job of helping the disadvantaged. You can try to paint us as racist suburbanites all you want, but you could not be further from the truth. How do you know what our ethnicity is? How do you know that we don't have African-American wives or partners? You don't. Its an easy cop out to paint anyone who wants to see less crime in a neighborhood and more economic development as a racist yuppie. What level of income does one need to earn to be considered a yuppie in your eyes? I can assure you that one of us earned less than 30K last year. Assume all you want. People want a safe and relatively clean neighborhood no matter what their ethnic background or economic status may be.
IDS, as a licensed clinical social worker, I uphold the values of my profession which relies on the utilization of best practices to help people stabilize their lives. My profession relies on research for guidance. I have successfully utilized interventions that have helped a number of homeless people become stabilized and independent again.... and I didn't do it by encouraging them to go after handouts or beg for a job while standing out on a sidewalk.
ReplyDeleteShow me research that documents that people can become economically stable by begging for jobs on the sidewalk and that this approach is better than case management. Your claim is certainly not backed by the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness. Can you name any organization that supports the idea that it's appropriate for people to be standing around a sidewalk to beg for a job?
I don't fault your good intentions. However, my training and experience has me believing that your good intentions are actually causing them harm. As an example, in last week's NewsStar, an article highlighted a chef who has a mission of providing homeless people with a nice meal. That's all she wants to do is to make sure they have a nice meal. In her charitable work, the chef mentioned that she was fortunate to have met a homeless woman named "Sticks". The chef said Sticks was a great role model to other homeless people because she taught them how to connect with all the social services in the area. For this chef, that's what made Sticks so wonderful. Well, Sticks died from a drug overdose. Sure, she knew where to go to get a free meal, but she needlessly died and many people along the way enabled her to die the miserable death she had. IDS, have you ever seen a person die from an overdose? It ain't pretty.
I'm not saying it's wrong to give a homeless person a meal. But there's a way of doing it that also motivates them to stabilize their lives. Inspiration Cafe is an excellent example of an agency that does an incredible job of helping homeless people stabilize their lives. They use past proven methods that work.
I've done enough work with homeless people to know that something's up when people stand around a sidewalk with very little to do, beg for a job, and now and then get a couple of bucks which might be enough to given them shelter for one night. I'm a member of the U-Haul task force and even someone from Shiller's campaign office admitted sheepishly that the vast majority of men there are up to no good and this person said he was tired of the fighting and drug dealing he saw when he worked for Shiller.
It's really sad that Shiller wastes her time worrying about dog poop instead of people urinating in public, harrassing women, and dealing drugs.
ReplyDeleteIf she actually took a stance people who need help might actaully seek help and everyone would benefit.
I've been to your meetings, I've seen your CAPS turnouts, I saw the racial divide at the debate. Whoever "we" is UU represents, you're divisive and predominantly, if not 99 44/100%, white.
ReplyDeleteJames makes it seem like we are fighting for democracy in Iraq, and helping people on the street hurts them. It may not be better than case management, but giving men a dollar for an honest days work is not wrong. James, you just don't make sense to me. What's the point of that story, homeless poor people are duping us into thinking they can fight their addiction, so don't help them? I know of cops who torture people, doctors who kill people, etc., all claiming to uphold the best practices of their profession, just like James.
As far as Shiller goes, this is a part time job for her and she has a son to raise.
IDS,
ReplyDeleteyou need to TRY to get your facts correct. Shiller's son, Brendan is in his mid 30's. He's an attorney. In fact he has done quite well representing 46th Ward businesses with liquor related issues. He has also received quite a bit of moolah from his mom's campaign fund over the years.
As for you stating that being Alderman is a part time job for Alderman Shiller you are apparently correct. The only time she is frequently seen doing ward business is right before the election.
Besides that she will appear at a few meetings, that normally get rescheduled multiple times, and typically shows up at City Council meetings a few hours late.
It is kinda difficult to make that one typical meeting a month.......I understand.
About $100,000 a year ain't bad for part time work.
IDS,
ReplyDeleteIf begging worked to help stabilize people's lives, social workers would be pushing that approach. But it doesn't work and you won't find any research literature that will have social workers promoting it.
You drifting off about doctors, cops, the war in Iraq, and the races of people is sounding strange. I don't go around murdering or torturing people and I never supported the war in Iraq. I was the recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King Humanitarian Award from the University of Chicago Medical Center, I'm a family advocate at a children's hospital in a predominantly African-American community, and as a former Franciscan friar in a parish that was 100% African-American, I sang in the gospel choir. I first started promoting civil rights as a high school kid 40 years ago. Your lame attempts of trying to paint me as a racist don't work.
I don't know what types of people IDS knows but after moving to Uptown and buying last year I heard from many business people and people that do a lot of good for needy people what a scam Shiller was and they said good luck with her. And these people were all from differnt wards. Had I known about Shiller prior to the purchase I would have not moved to Uptown. I even got the opportunity to meet her after moving to the ward due to issues with our developer and she was zero help and played stupid. The reason a lot of those store fronts are empty is because no one wants to deal with here or be in her ward.
ReplyDeleteYou are not helping anyone that is homeless by giving them money. Direct them to an organization that can deal with them and help them.
r.
ReplyDeleteShiller didn't help you because she is on the "take" from developers. He probably "donated" a lot of cash to the alderman this past election.
She uses this "I care for the kess fortunate" persona to fuel her corruption. It's all about money for her. I mean she collects $100k a year, and can't even show up for work. And when she has shown up for work, she doesn't even vote. She's a waste in every sense of the word.
Well I didn't vote for her so at least that makes me feel better. I wish they would concentrate on these Alderman (the Feds) instead of Conrad Black and Hollinger. It seems they give the Alderman a lot of breaks.
ReplyDeleteIDs,
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty ironic to me that you slam UU for taking pictures of people from behind asking "can't you face them?" and then continue to attack James from a very comfortable position of anonymity.
Also, boiling down this and other Uptown troubles to an issue of race is such a tired tactic. Seriously, try and divorce yourself from subjective emotion and re-read your and James' posts; I think deep down even YOU will realize that your posts are filled with venom while James' merely exhibit human concern and a passion for trying to find a balanced answer.
No more excuses,
J