IMAGES OF CHURCH PROTEST: Sunday morning, December 30, 2001
For immediate release: December 30, 2001
Contacts: Gerardo Reyes 773-254-3348; Aureliano Bermudez 708-795-6603, Margarita Villasenor 847-928-9095
Parishioners Demonstrate against UIC Crackdown on St. Francis Church
On Sunday morning, December 30, 2001, in winter weather with below freezing temperatures, the Preservation Committee of the St. Francis of Assisi Church organized an outdoor demonstration in front of their church to protest against continuing UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago) harassment of its parishioners. Starting just before Christmas and continuing on to include the Masses just before the new year, UIC police are heavily ticketing parishioners at their church for parking and standing next to the church and for making left turns to the church from Roosevelt Rd. to Newberry Street (which is not against the law).
The St. Francis of Assisi Church is the oldest Spanish speaking Catholic Church in the city. Parishioners view this as part of a plan to kick them out the neighborhood. In February 1996, UIC tried to acquire the land the church sits on, thereby causing forced abandonment of it and demolition destruction to part of the church building. By camping out in the church for over nine months in the unheated stripped building, the parishioners finally got their church back. Over a million dollars have been spent to restore it.
Gerardo Reyes, President of the St. Francis of Assisi Church Preservation Committee, says, "In the past months, UIC created congestion here by closing down streets and narrowing the roads. They have completely cut us off from accessing Maxwell Street. Then they ticket us when we have to pick up our families in this freezing weather. Our parishioners sometimes have to stand and double park. There are mothers with babies in blankets and old people who can not take the cold and walk too far."
Says fellow demonstrator Aureliano Bermudez, member of the St. Francis of Assisi Church Preservation Committee, "For over 35 years we have never gotten tickets from the Chicago Police. Now UIC is doing this to us, and at Christmas time yet. This is suppose to be time of peace when you are reminded to love thy neighbor. UIC is not a very good neighbor."
Reyes comments, "This is bad weather, a really bad time to demonstrate. My fingers nearly froze today but we do this because we are in fear UIC will banish us, little by little. They want us to leave but this is our church, where we come to pray to God. This is where our community comes together. We will not leave."
When told of this, Merlyn McFarland, a former resident known as the Mayor of Maxwell Street, said, "UIC is acting like little dictators again. That is their pattern but gosh, this is Christmas! Do they always have to be bullies?"
For more information St. Francis of Assisi Church see <http://homepage.interaccess.com/~mar/oth1/stf.html> and
<http://www.openair.org/maxwell/ppress39.html>. For more information about Maxwell Street see <http://www.maxwellstreet.org> and <http://www.openair.org/maxwell/preserve.html>
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