The Area was a close-knit Englewood community and subject of a searing documentary. Has anything changed in Chicago since residents were forced out?
Hindsight might be 20/20, but that doesn’t make watching the events of 2018’s “The Area” any easier.
The documentary depicts the five-year struggle of a group of Englewood residents taking a stand against the Norfolk Southern Railway Co.’s expansion into their neighborhood and their subsequent displacement.
It’s a David vs. Goliath battle, but by the end of the documentary, which airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday on the World Channel, the giant wins. In a pandemic, at a time when many are taking solace in the comforts of a well-loved home, it’s not an easy image to stomach.
But it doesn’t always have to be that way. The film’s central protagonist and co-producer, Deborah Payne, continues to tell the story of The Area and continues to fight against injustice around her by providing words of encouragement to those fighting their own Goliath.
“That’s my story ... it happened to me, happened to my neighborhood,” said Payne, 69. “But it’s happening all over the world.”
In Chicago, there is continued displacement of communities of color to make way for developments that price families out of the neighborhoods they called home, sometimes for generations. “The Area,” which will stream through Feb. 28 on the PBS app and online, is still plenty relevant.
Payne sees similarities between The Area residents and community members who opposed the placement of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park.
“I know people have mixed emotions, so their fight is a little bit different,” she said. “I can’t fight people’s fight, but I can understand and keep them encouraged: Don’t forget about the people who you’re fighting for.”
While community-based advocates rally against gentrification and fight to preserve their communities, the city needs to support efforts such as Payne’s, said Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th.
“We should have come to their rescue,” said Taylor, a community organizer who replaced Ald. Willie Cochran in 2019 to represent the ward, which includes portions of Englewood, Woodlawn, Back of the Yards and Greater Grand Crossing.
Since her election, Taylor has spearheaded efforts to create an affordable housing-focused community benefits agreement tied to the Obama Presidential Center. Prior to her election, she spent years fighting disinvestment on the South Side.
The erasure of The Area, she said, is “disheartening.”
“All these fights going on in the city, and this one fell underneath the radar,” Taylor said. “This whole community was wiped out for a deal that the community didn’t want or ask for. But that’s historically what’s been done to Black and brown folks — they wouldn’t have pulled this crap on the North Side.”
The documentary, created by Minneapolis-based sociologist and photographer David Schalliol, is a bleak chronicle of community efforts to halt the sale of blocks and blocks of homes to be bulldozed and replaced with a freight yard. Early on, vignettes depict neighbors spending time together, barbecuing while children play nearby. As 200 families slip away, shots of wrecking cranes demolishing homes are interspersed with residents’ stories.
Neighbors brainstorm in crowded living rooms and band together at City Council meetings, even as the city sells more than 100 vacant lots, acquired through foreclosure, to the railroad company. As Cochran, who would go on to be convicted of public corruption in an unrelated matter, thanks Norfolk Southern for “investing in my ward,” activists charge that The Area, once vibrant, was gradually hollowed out as the railway acquired properties.
In the end, familial streets with lifelong connections were razed or left empty to make way for concrete and railway cars.
Looking back, Payne said she would have brought more community organizations aboard the fight for her neighborhood. She said anyone with concerns should get in touch with aldermen and push them to be transparent.
“I would tell community people, if you have a fight such as this or something you feel unfair, get the facts,” she said. “Know your people, know the community, know someone that has gone through something similar and fight like hell.”
Payne said she used to drive through the streets of her old community, bounded by Garfield Boulevard, 61st Street, Stewart Avenue and Wallace Street, three or four times a week. Removed to a condo in Bronzeville in 2016, Payne said her friends have moved on, and her old Englewood church is gone. She has no reason to go back anymore.
“(Railway officials) kept saying, ‘A better place, a better place,’ ” Payne said. “Yes, it was a better house, but it never was a home. I thought I was gonna stay here forever. It’s a raggedy thing to you, but it’s my home.”
She wasn’t alone in her sentiment. Generations of Englewood residents called The Area home, with legacies and heritages attached to the land. Some, such as Steven Rogers, held out until Norfolk Southern sued for the properties through eminent domain.
“If someone came to take your house, what would you do? How would you feel?” Rogers asked in 2016. “It’s no different just because it’s Englewood.”
Some sold early on. Tina Marshall, whose family’s story is shared in the documentary, spends four months looking for a new home after she said she felt the railroad tricked her, instructing her to not pay her mortgage to complete the process faster — at the expense of her personal credit.
“I got screwed,” she says in the documentary. “They knew what they were doing, and if you’re foolish enough to do it, it’s on your credit report and that’s the worst strike you can have.”
The question in 2021, though, is whether things have gotten any better since “The Area” premiered during the 2018 Gene Siskel Film Center Black Harvest festival.
“We’re all fighting for some of the same things — equitable housing, going to work in our own community,” Taylor said. “We want to make a living wage and we want to live safe.”
When asked how to prevent another “Area” from happening in Englewood, Taylor suggested the creation of community land trusts. The Chicago Community Land Trust program, started in 2006, seeks to keep homes affordable by providing financial incentives such as lower property taxes to homeowners who agree to ultimately sell the home at an affordable price.
In 2019, the city expanded into buying additional homes for the land trust in neighborhoods experiencing gentrification, and allowing homeowners to opt in to the program.
On Tuesday, the Resident Association of Greater Englewood and Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas will host a virtual webinar “Black Houses Matter.” The program is geared at preventing Black-owned homes from being placed on the annual tax sale list, which allows bidders to buy owed property tax liens and potentially foreclose on the home if the back taxes aren’t paid. Of 38,000 houses on the list, 75% belong to Black homeowners.
For Schalliol, the work for equity between community, social structure, and place continues. He will be discussing how individuals and local agencies can elevate communities together at a Chicago Architecture Biennial event Tuesday. As a 2021 photography fellow at Exhibit Columbus in Columbus, Indiana, his work will center around the greater Mississippi watershed, highlighting the way communities and environment are fundamentally intertwined.
Schalliol said he hopes the Biden-Harris administration will bring increased attention to community activists such as Payne who are working to address issues of structural racism and other systemic ills.
“I think about the kind of work that Deborah does, so rooted in the community experience and what is going on in neighborhoods,” he said. “(Those are) things that need to be in the foreground when we think about what’s next and how can we create a more just and equitable future.”
“The Area” airs Tuesday at 11 p.m. on the World Channel.
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