by Steve Balkin, Vice President of the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition, <mar@openair.org> , 9/18/99

The Chicago Flame is UIC's student newspaper. In the Opinion section of the last issue, UIC English major, Michael Hearn, writes a very strong derogatory Maxwell Street article using metaphors of outhouses, toilets, and shit. You may read the original in its entirety at <http://www.chicagoflame.com/issues/091499/opinions2.html>. Here are a few quotes:

that smelly, rickety eyesore of a shit-house is really a national treasure and you just didn't know it. At least it is according to the National Society for the Preservation of Old Toilets. They say that by tearing down that old toilet you're forever destroying a monument to crap.

• The moral is crap is crap, and progress is progress, and crap is not progress and never will be. Those who wish to preserve the Maxwell Street market are caught up in the preservation of crap.

In truth, it's an eyesore, a smelly, rickety, shit-house of an eyesore. If you think it's anything else than that, you're just kidding yourself. Not only that, but you're also holding up real progress. That's why I say, cut the crap and bring on The Gap!

by Steve Balkin, Vice President of the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition

I felt the anti-Maxwell Street article by Michael Hearn in the Opinions Section of the September 14, 1999 issue of the Chicago Flame was obnoxious and fascistic. I defend his right to express his views but strongly disagree with them.

Mr. Hearn's essay is a graphic example of the harm that the University of Illinois does to itself and our children by its Maxwell Street policy of degrading the people and physical environment of this historic area. The UIC administration is successful at communicating its message of disrespect for poor people in old neighborhoods, that the needs of the University are always more important than the lives of the indigent and the preservation of history. Even when UIC talks about Unity and Diversity it is usually with respect to within UIC, not with UIC and its surrounding communities. We think that UIC's problems, with not fully informing human subjects of the possible harmful consequences of their participation with UIC's experiments, is a symptom of the same issue.

Mission statements are great but actions speak louder than words. Students learn by what their professors and universities do as much as what their textbooks say. The lesson of tearing down Maxwell Street teaches students that history--their own, their neighbors'--doesn't really matter.

If Mr. Hearn would look a little below the surface, he would discover that all the abandoned buildings in the neighborhood are owned by UIC. Instead, Mr. Hearn learned that if his University says it's OK to flush Maxwell Street away, Maxwell Street must be "shit".

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